We have a patient who has a Hospital Managers hearing coming up and has written to the panel regarding their situation. They have explicitly asked that their letters are not shared with the professionals and the AHM’s are uneasy about this. My feeling is that they are within their rights to request this - the Code of Practice makes no mention of reports being shared with anyone other than the panel and the patient / NR / IMHA / legal rep, so I am of the belief that this should be accepted. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
You can’t fall foul of any rules relating to managers hearings, because obviously there aren’t any, but if it was a Tribunal, the letter would have to be shared with the other parties (rule 32) and any challenge might necessitate justifying departure from the principles that the Tribunal adopts.
What you must do, is ensure that you have met the criteria in 38.24 of the Code, in respect of fairness, reasonableness and lawfulness; so in addition to the above, could failure to disclose the letter be justified from that perspective?
If the patient has a legal rep, discuss it with them.
I may have accidently flagged your post - apologies!
My thoughts here are that the patient has the right to speak to the Panel before or after the Hearing without the other professionals present. Is this not the same thing but it’s in a letter rather than verbal?