Any links between bank holiday pay and mortality?

The Queen's diamond jubilee celebrations are going on right now. The government declared a 'bank holiday' on Tuesday 5 June 2012 (http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Nl1/Newsroom/DG_183806). Some of us will still be working over the celebration period to keep essential and emergency services going. This includes NHS staff. Individual NHS organisations can decide on whether they will treat this extra holiday as 'bank holiday' or 'public holiday'; they do not have to follow the government declaration of a 'bank holiday'. 'Bank holiday' attracts a higher rate of pay for those who work on that day along with some other terms advantageous to the employees. 'Public holiday' does not attract a higher rate of pay.

Unite Union surveyed their members and found that 113 NHS organisations were treating this as a 'public holiday' and hence no extra pay for staff. (http://www.unitetheunion.org/news__events/latest_news/_named-and-shamed__-_nhs_emplo.aspx) They have called this 'mean-spirited' and called their publication 'named and shamed'.

My interest includes hospital mortality and I wanted to find out what the high mortality hospitals and low mortality hospitals did in terms of the bank/public holiday pay arrangements. I took the list of 21 low mortality hospitals and 19 high mortality hospital from drFoster's hospital guide and then cross checked with Unite's named and shamed list. The findings are interesting to put it mildly.

My findings are:

7 OUT OF 21 LOW MORTALITY HOSPITALS ARE IN UNITE'S LIST (suggesting that they are not pay bank holiday rates)

14 OUT OF 21 LOW MORTALITY HOSPITALS ARE NOT IN UNITE'S LIST (suggesting that they are paying bank holiday rates)

14 OUT OF 19 HIGH MORTALITY HOSPITALS ARE IN UNITE'S LIST (suggesting that they are not paying bank holiday rates)

5 OUT OF 19 HIGH MORTALITY HOSPITALS NOT IN UNITE'S LIST (suggesting that they are paying bank holiday rates)

Low Mortality Hospitals (as per dr Foster)	Unite's named-and-shamed list
Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals NHS Trust	In Unites' list
Barts and the London NHS Trust	In Unites' list
Cambridge University Hospitals NHS	In Unites' list
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS	Not in Unite list
Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals	Not in Unite list
Frimley Park Hospital NHS Foundation Trust	Not in Unite list
Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust	Not in Unite list
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust†	Not in Unite list
King’s College Hospital NHS	In Unites' list
Kingston Hospital NHS Trust†	Not in Unite list
Newham University Hospital NHS Trust†	Not in Unite list
North West London Hospitals NHS Trust	Not in Unite list
Royal Devon and Exeter	Not in Unite list
Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust	Not in Unite list
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS	In Unites' list
South London Healthcare NHS Trust†	Not in Unite list
St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust	Not in Unite list
The Whittington Hospital NHS Trust†	In Unites' list
University College London Hospitals	Not in Unite list
University Hospitals Bristol	In Unites' list
West Suffolk Hospitals NHS Trust	Not in Unite list
High mortality hospitals (as per dr Foster)	Unite's named-and-shamed list
Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS	Not in Unite list
Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust	Not in Unite list
Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust	Not in Unite list
Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust	In Unites' list
George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust	Not in Unite list
Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust	In Unites' list
Isle of Wight NHS Primary Care Trust	Not in Unite list
Medway NHS Foundation Trust	In Unites' list
Mid Cheshire Hospitals	In Unites' list
North Cumbria University Hospitals	In Unites' list
Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust	In Unites' list
Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals	In Unites' list
Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital	In Unites' list
The Dudley Group of Hospitals	In Unites' list
The Royal Wolverhampton	In Unites' list
United Lincolnshire Hospitals	In Unites' list
University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay	In Unites' list
Worcestershire Acute Hospitals	In Unites' list
York Teaching Hospital	In Unites' list

Caution: This is a write up based on information that is publicly available so far. This analysis may not be accurate. We can find out the correct situation only when either NHS employers or individual trusts tell us whether they have paid extra treating it as a bank holiday or not paid extra treating it as a public holiday. So further enquiry and analysis would be needed to validate this. What is presented here is a mere observation and does not suggest cause and effect.

On the basis of current information (this may change when we have accurate information) it seems like there may be attitudes and cultures of organisations, management and staff, playing a bigger part in mortality and morbidity than we previously have assumed.

Please let me know if there are any factual errors in the above and I am only too willing to correct them.

©M HEMADRI 

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