Dr. Tracey Cooper:

All of the standards about which we have talked, particularly those for people with disabilities and their health care standards, have a large section dealing with workforce resources.

In response to the question about ensuring that there are enough staff to carry out a job, given the current reality, if the staff numbers, and the skills of those staff, are such that there are not enough to provide a service then certain services should not be provided in that situation. When we start monitoring how a hospital, for example, manages its workforce it is not just a matter of knowing how many people there are on a shift basis but also of ensuring that health care professionals are working to the highest level they can rather than saying "Doctors always do that". Emergency nurse practitioners are trained up with all the clinical governance and are doing more advanced work than they have done previously which helps in providing the workforce.

As far as budgetary resources are concerned we are not there to comment on how much the budget provider has but we want to know that it is using the money appropriately for the population of patients and is making decisions about curtailing or optimising services based on risk, type of patient, waiting lists, rather than making arbitrary cuts. In the current climate we are not going to comment on the resources but we do want to know that they are being used in an informed way.