The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has told United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust that services provided by the emergency departments at Pilgrim Hospital and Lincoln County Hospital must improve.
Prompted by patient safety concerns, CQC undertook focused inspections of the emergency departments at both hospitals on 6 and 7 January 2020.
CQC inspectors rated Urgent and Emergency Services as Inadequate overall. Both emergency departments were rated Inadequate for being safe, responsive and well led with Pilgrim Hospital also rated Inadequate for being caring United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust is rated as Requires Improvement overall.
Following the inspections, CQC undertook enforcement action at Pilgrim Hospital, telling the trust it must adhere to conditions, including; ensuring patients are seen within a specified time frame, that appropriate systems are in place if a patient’s health deteriorates following admission, that enough skilled staff are always on duty, and that patients are treated with dignity and respect.
The trust has sent CQC updates detailing what action they have already taken and what further actions they are taking to meet these requirements.
CQC’s Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Professor Ted Baker, said:
“When we visited the emergency departments at Pilgrim Hospital and Lincoln County Hospital, we saw several areas where improvements must be made, this included the requirement for urgent actions to be taken at Pilgrim Hospital.
“Ambulance handover delays remained a challenge, with some patients experiencing delays of more than 100 minutes from arrival by ambulance to being handed over to trust staff for commencement of care and treatment.
“Patient flow must be coordinated across the whole emergency care pathway to ensure patients receive care and treatment in a timely way.
“The A&E department at Pilgrim Hospital was overcrowded and too small for the number of patients attending and leaders lacked the skills to run the service effectively. This impacted on how patient flow could be managed. It also resulted in patients being treated in corridors or the central space of the department and having their dignity compromised.
“The trust must ensure there are always sufficient numbers of staff with the right skills deployed to ensure the department remains safe. There was an over-reliance on bank and agency staff because the service did not have enough permanent nursing and medical staff.
“The trust has a lot of work to do to reduce pressures on the emergency departments and they must ensure all improvements made are sustained. We will continue to monitor the trust closely and will return to inspect in due course.”
Full details of the ratings, including a ratings grid, are given in the report published online at: www.cqc.org.uk/provider/RWD
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