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CQC recognise improvements

15th February 2012

CQC recognise improvements 

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has today published reports following its inspection visits to Eastbourne District General Hospital and Conquest Hospital in September 2011. These reports show that the Trust has made a number of improvements that have ensured that services are now compliant in five areas where there were previously major or moderate concerns.

Improvements made in these areas include:

  • Improving the physical environment for patients including in A&E to ensure the privacy and dignity of patients is maintained at all times.
  • Involving patient representatives and external peer reviewers in monitoring the privacy and dignity of patients.
  • Sustaining reductions in healthcare associated infections and an improvement in cleaning standards.
  • Improving quality and safety through weekly review at ward and department level.

The warning notice published today by the CQC was issued to the Trust a month ago. It follows statements made by the Trust to the CQC after the Trust had undertaken an internal assessment of its own compliance with the CQC regulations and standards. This was undertaken as part of an ongoing programme of improvement which has been in place for the last 18 months.

The Trust is continuing to undertake work to comply with the CQC regulations and the warning notice and takes this work extremely seriously. The Trust has already informed the CQC that it fully expects to complete the remaining actions within the timescales required.  The warning notice focuses on the actions that the Trust needs to take to ensure it is able to assess and monitor the quality of service provision. Following the merger with community services in April 2011 the Trust has been developing and implementing systems of quality monitoring across the whole of the new organisation. This has required the implementation of radical new governance structures and processes. Over the next few weeks the Trust will continue and complete the work currently underway to ensure the organisation is able to monitor risks and service quality at every level from ward to the Board.

In addition to taking action to comply with the warning notice there are a number of ongoing actions that the Trust is taking to address those areas where the CQC continues to have concerns. These include:

  • Focusing on consent and end of life care and introducing a new Do Not Attempt Resuscitation policy in line with best practice.
  • Sustaining our focus on training for on safeguarding, mental capacity and deprivation of liberty for all health professionals and ensuring we are protecting patients by having senior clinical leads for all safeguarding systems.
  • Undertaking an external review of the Trust’s systems and processes for monitoring quality and safety and adopting its recommendations ensuring we now have more robust mechanisms in place to understand and manage our risks including escalating them to the Trust Board when required. 
  • Appointing an additional Emergency Department consultant on each site and, following an extensive recruitment campaign, filling all middle grade posts at Eastbourne DGH with substantive staff and all posts at Conquest Hospital with either substantive staff or locum cover. 
  • Ensuring that where the Trust uses locum doctors, for example, to cover areas where recruitment has been difficult and there are known national shortages, actions are taken to ensure that safe and appropriate care is provided to patients through long-term appointments that provide continuity of care.
  • Undergoing a complete restructure of our governance arrangements including introducing a Quality and Safety committee to provide scrutiny and oversight of quality issues in order to reinforce the Trust’s commitment to maintain the highest possible levels of patient safety.
  • Introducing personalised care plans to compliment the existing integrated patient documentation and ensure consistent standards of care.
  • Introducing ‘hourly rounds’ by ward staff to improve the patient experience and outcomes and the overall communication between staff and patients.
  • Introducing ward matrons as the clinical leaders on every ward to ensure the sustained delivery of quality standards for every patient.

Darren Grayson, Trust Chief Executive, said: “We are committed to improving the quality of care and outcomes for patients and aim to get every aspect of care right for all our patients all of the time.  These reports demonstrate the improvements we had made five months ago.  We have made considerable progress since then and we continue to make improvements across the Trust to address all the areas the CQC has highlighted for improvement.

“We have always been open with local people that the improvements required in the quality of care at the Trust will take time to deliver and require large scale cultural and service change. We have also been clear that our improvement programme is inextricably linked with the development of our Clinical Strategy: Shaping our Future which will set out how we will deliver high quality services in the future. The Board is expected to consider the Clinical Strategy at its meeting in March when it will also review compliance with CQC regulations.”

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