Staffing and Facilities Guidance
Every population needs locally delivered community care as well as hospital-based services providing specialist investigations and treatments, including admission. Many of the doctors and nurses will work in both settings and an integrated service and care pathways must be provided to ensure quality of care.
Staffing and Health Facilities Guidance for Dermatological Units
Requirements for staffing and facilities will vary with the location of the unit and the type of treatments it undertakes. Each treatment will also have its own staffing and facilities requirements to comply with clinical governance and safety standards such as Phototherapy.
The BAD Staffing and Facilities Guidance provides general information for providers, commissioners and local health authorities on staffing and facilities requirements for dermatology services. This is supported by the BAD Staffing and Facilities for Skin Surgical Units guidance.
Each document sets out the staffing and facilities requirements across the three service levels of care recognised by the DH:
• Community Care / Intermediate Care Services
• Secondary Care Services (Acute)
• (Supra) Specialist Care Services (Tertiary Care)
Separate guidance is provided for outreach clinics.
BAD Staffing and Facilities Guidance
BAD Staffing and Facilities for Skin Surgical Units Guidance
BAD Outreach Clinics Guidance
These services are contracted under the NHS Standard Contract for 2023/24 for Acute Services or Community Services, or by Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) for individual GPwER services. There are core legal requirements relating to ‘Staff’ and ‘Services environment and equipment’ for providing NHS services. These should be informed by the BAD staffing and facilities guidance above.
Facilities
The provision of well-designed and appropriate facilities is very important to the functioning of a dermatology service.
Premises for all services should conform to the registration criteria of the Care Quality Commission. The NHS Constitution for England also commits the NHS to provide services from ‘a clean and safe environment that is fit for purpose based on national best practice’.
DH Estates and Facilities provide national best practice guidance on the design and layout of facilities for NHS organisations, which are published as Health Building Notes (HBN) or as Health Technical Memoranda (HTM) for all NHS Health Services across England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.
NHS providers are able to register for free using your NHS email address ending with nhs.uk or nhs.net.
