England’s Chief Inspector of Hospitals has rated the services provided by North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust as Outstanding following inspections by the Care Quality Commission.
North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust provides a range of inpatient and community mental health services to adults, older people and children. Between 4 December 2018 and 23 January 2019, a team of CQC inspectors visited the trust.
Following the trust’s previous inspection, in 2017, the trust was rated as Good overall.
On their return, inspectors found further improvements had been made and this is reflected in the trust’s new overall rating of Outstanding. The trust is also rated as Outstanding for whether its services are caring and responsive and Good for whether its services are safe, effective and well-led.
Deputy Chief Inspector for Hospitals (lead for mental health), Paul Lelliott, said:
“The board and staff at North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust can be proud of many of the services that it manages, the improvements it has made and its new Outstanding rating.
“We found a number of areas of outstanding practice at the trust that were making a real difference to people’s lives.
“Staff treated patients with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity, and supported their individual needs. There was good leadership across the trust and managers had the right skills to undertake their roles, while the board had good understanding of performance.
“On our return we found the requirement notices we set out in our previous report had been met and medicines safety had improved on the wards for older adults and the community teams. Staff in the community teams now inspected emergency equipment as a matter of routine.
“Patients and those close to them were involved in decisions about their care, treatment and changes to the service and staff knew how to keep patients safe. They reported incidents, including abuse, and learned from incidents.
“There are some areas where we have told the trust it must make improvements and will return in due course to check on the progress that they have made.
“Overall the trust is to be congratulated for all its work to provide an Outstanding service to its patients.”
The areas of outstanding practice that CQC found, included:
- There had been a significant reduction in the number of restraints used across wards for older people with mental health problems. Detailed and personalised care plans around the management of challenging behaviours allowed staff to find alternatives to restraint, so it was only used as a last resort.
- In community-based mental health services for adults of working age there was a good response to any sudden deterioration whereby patients could just walk in to any location or call the duty person that was allocated for the day to respond to any urgent cases.
- The level and detail of information contained in the comprehensive assessments on admission demonstrated a clear holistic approach to care and treatment in community-based mental health services for adults of working age.
- The access and crisis team’s call centre was highly responsive and exceptionally well organised. Patients did not have to wait long to speak directly to a clinician and the interventions provided by staff were of an excellent quality and range. This quality of service was maintained through supervision provided at the point of patient contact.
- Staff in all services proactively engaged with partnership agencies to ensure holistic treatment responses to patients with substance misuse problems. This meant that patients received a holistic service that recognised the impact their mental health had on their substance use.
The trust has also been told there are areas where it must make improvements, including:
- The trust must ensure applications made for authorisation of Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards on wards for older people with mental health problems and their outcomes are notified to the CQC.
- The trust must ensure that all care plans are comprehensive and personalised to the patient.
Full details of the ratings, including a ratings grid, are given in the report published online.
We found a number of areas of outstanding practice at the trust that were making a real difference to people's lives.
Paul Lelliott, Deputy Chief Inspector for Hospitals