NMC to spend extra £1.5m to reduce Fitness to Practise caseload

Extra Fitness to Practise (FtP) hearings are being held over the next three months to clear the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s (NMC) outstanding caseload, but will cost the nursing regulator £1.5 million in overspend.

The NMC revealed it expected to spend £40,625,000 against its FtP budget of £39,051,000 for the 2016-17 financial year.

This is in order to reduce its caseload from 1,044 cases, as of January, to the 822 cases forecasted.

‘Behind the curve’

The overspend means the NMC will likely only be able to deliver £1.3m of the £2.8m efficiency savings it was seeking to make this year.

FtP director Sarah Page told a recent meeting of the NMC’s ruling council that ‘all available capacity’ would be used in order to conclude as many outstanding cases as possible.

She said: ‘We are holding a higher number of cases at the adjudication stage than we had forecast, so we are behind the curve on that.’

Clearing cases

The FtP caseload fell from 4,113 cases on 1 November to 3,941 cases by 31 December, equating to 600 cases fewer than the same point in 2015-16.

However, the referral rate is up almost 2%, with 425 more cases than the previous year.

The NMC will be particularly focusing on removing older cases from its books after reporting how the average age of cases reaching the adjudication stage is currently 77 weeks.

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