Health watchdog gives NHS hospital trust ‘good’ rating
HALTON and Warrington hospitals have been rated ‘good’ overall by the health service watchdog.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) published its findings on Friday ( July 24) following an inspection in April, noting an upturn in standards and performance since 2017 when the trust was told it ‘requires improvement’.
Inspectors reported ‘outstanding’ practice in the medical care, critical care and maternity services.
These included the he Smart Heart programme run by consultant cardiologist Dr Ahmed Farag with primary school children, the frailty unit, dementia services, a critical care outreach practice, and the maternity bereavement service, which a Warrington And Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust spokeswoman (WHH) said had won the Butterfly award for best hospital bereavement team.
Neither hospital was graded lower than ‘good’ in any of the categories assessed.
Inspectors assessed the following aspects of the trust’s work: surgery,
maternity, critical care, medicine and outpatients.
They also examined its management and how well-led it is.
At Halton General Hospital, outpatient services were rated good.
Inspectors said there were enough experienced and skilled staff who knew how to protect patients,and were treating people with ‘compassion and kindness’.
Inspectors also reported the service had effective leaders and a culture of learning to improve the service.
Surgery at the hospital had improved from its previous ‘requires improvement’ rating for safety to ‘good’.
Maternity services at Warrington Hospital were inspected for the first time as a separate service, with the CQC reporting ‘good numbers’ of skilled and experienced staff who cared for patients with ‘compassion and appropriate emotional support’.
A CQC spokesman said staff were seen caring for patients with kindness and inspectors heard of how staff went to great lengths for patients. Medical care services had also ‘significantly’ increased in quality and were rated good.
Despite rising standards, the CQC report contained a list of things to improve including securely storing medicines in surgical theatre at Halton General Hospital and to review its financial plans for 2019-20.
Professor Ted Baker, England’s Chief Inspector Of Hospitals, said: “The trust was rated requires improvement in the last two inspections.
“So, it is good to see that they have made sustainable improvements in a number of areas and brought themselves up to standard.
“There has been a strong commitment by everyone at the trust to continuous improvement and learning, so patients can experience the best possible care.
“We found the trust had a renewed focus on sustainability and services aligned with community healthcare services.
“There was open engagement between staff and leadership, and an embedded vision of highquality care for the future.
“The trust had clearly responded well to our previous findings.
“However, there are some areas for further improvement, which we have made clear.
“We will continue to monitor the trust closely and return to inspect again in due course.”
Following the publication of the award, Mel Pickup, WHH Trust’s outgoing chief executive, said: “This CQC good rating demonstrates a significant shift in the standards we deliver for our patients in just 20 months since our last inspection was published.
“Following the last inspection we changed our mission to focus on not only achieving a good rating but to take the trust to outstanding for our patients, our communities and each other.
“We took great pleasure today in renaming the improvement programme, which has for the last 30 months been called ‘Getting To Good, Moving To Outstanding’ to simply ‘Moving To Outstanding’.
“We are already working on the areas in the report that the inspectors felt still had room for improvement.
“Our 4,400 staff seized the opportunity to ‘Be The Change’ and today’s report is a testament to their sheer determination that nothing but good was what we wanted for our patients.
“This is the culmination of two year’s exceptional effort, hard work and determination by WHH staff and volunteers.
“Today belongs them.”
The report said the trust reported having 539 beds: 431 at Warrington; 44 elective and 22 intermediate care beds at Halton and 42 trauma and orthopaedic beds at the Cheshire And Merseyside Treatment Centre, based at Halton.
In the year before the Number 1 Installer Of Replacement Conservatory Roofs in Widnes to ● inspection there were 112,000 visits to the emergency department at Warrington Hospital and 30,000 to the urgent care centre at Halton General Hospital.
In the same period there were approximately 500,000 individual patient appointments, procedures and stays and approximately 3,000 babies were born. • 10 Years Insurance
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