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FOI foi@nhsla.com
Freedom of Information Request F/2422
4 August 2015 17:24
Minh Alexander minhalexander@aol.com

Dear Dr Alexander
I write in relation to your email of 9 July 2015 in which you have requested information
regarding the death of doctors under an NCAS referral. Specifically, you have requested:
1) Can NCAS advise if any doctors have died after being referred to NCAS and whilst
their cases are open to NCAS, and if so, how many have died?
2) Can NCAS advise whether any such deaths have been due to suicide, and if so,
how many suicides have occurred?
3) If there have been deaths, has NCAS examined the related diversity issues such the
age, gender and Race of doctors who have died, including by suicide? If so, what
are the results of the diversity analysis on
i) all doctors who died under NCAS process
ii) doctors who died by suicide under NCAS process.
iii) doctors who died by other causes under NCAS process
4) If NCAS has reviewed the above matters, or arranged for a review of these matters
to be undertaken, I would be grateful if it would share the full report of any such
review.
Your request has been considered under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I will answer
each question in turn.
1. Between April 2001 and March 2014 we have identified 8 doctors who have died
while having an open case with NCAS.
2. NCAS does not receive any coroner reports relating to deaths and so cannot
comment on the cause of death.
3. We would like to note that all the cases were NCAS advice cases. This means they
were either under or potentially under a process in their respective referring bodies
and NCAS was offering advice to assist any such process. No doctor was under an
NCAS process such as an NCAS assessment.
(i)

All doctors were male

The age of the doctors were:
30-34 (1); 35-39 (1); 45-49 (1); 50-54 (3); not known (2)
The race of the doctors were:
white (4); black and ethnic minority (2); not known (2)

We are unable to provide a response to 3(ii) and 3(iii) for the reasons in question 2.
4. NCAS has not carried out or written a full report on these deaths and so this is not
held.
This concludes the response to your request.
If you are not satisfied with the service that you have received in response to your
information request, it is open to you to make a complaint and request a formal review of
our decisions. If you choose to do this, you should write to Tinku Mitra, Head of Governance
for the NHS LA, within 28 days of your receipt of this reply. Reviews of decisions made in
relation to information requests are carried out by a person who was not involved in the
original decision-making about the request.
If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint, you may apply directly to the

If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint, you may apply directly to the
Information Commissioner for a review of the decision by him. Generally, the Information
Commissioner will not make a decision unless you have exhausted the local complaints
procedure. The address of the Information Commissioners Office is:
Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.
Kind regards,
!
Joe Stock | Information Access Manager | Corporate Governance Team
NHS Litigation Authority (NHS LA)

: Joe.Stock@nhsla.com
(!!020!7811!2821!(BPR)!020!7972!8143!(SKH)
*! 151 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 9SZ
Website: nhsla.com www.ncas.nhs.uk!

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