The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has found improvements at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS Foundation Trust following an inspection – but more work is needed to ensure patients receive the care they should be able to expect.
Between 14 and 23 September 2020 inspectors visited six of the trust’s core services, including urgent and emergency care, medical care, surgery, maternity, end of life care and diagnostic imaging, to check on whether improvements had been made since the previous inspection in July 2019.
Four of the six services - urgent and emergency care, medical care, end of life care and diagnostic imaging – were rated as Inadequate following the previous inspection, while maternity and surgery had been rated as Requires Improvement.
Following CQC’s September inspection, ratings for four of the services’ have improved. Medical care, urgent and emergency care, end of life care and diagnostic imaging’s ratings have improved from Inadequate to Requires Improvement overall. The ratings for the trust’s maternity service and surgery remain unchanged, both being rated as Requires improvement overall.
Additionally, all the six services are rated as Good for whether the services are caring, with both the emergency department and medical care’s ratings in this key question improving from Requires Improvement to Good. The rating for whether services are safe in medical care also improved from Inadequate to Good.
This inspection did not look at the key question of whether the trust is well-led and, while this means the trust’s overall rating of Inadequate is unchanged and it remains in special measures, inspectors found clear evidence that progress was being made.
CQC’s Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Ted Baker, said:
“Our inspectors found improvements at The Queen Elizabeth Hospitals King’s Lynn NHS Trust, but more work is needed to ensure patients always receive the care they should be able to expect.
“We have told the trust it must take immediate action to ensure anaesthetists have the right training in maternity services and that staffing levels are sufficient to provide safe care in diagnostic imaging. We have also highlighted a number of other areas where the trust should make improvements including ensuring all mandatory staff training is completed.
“However, we found real cultural change had taken place across the trust and staff were demonstrably more positive and engaged. Our inspection team particularly noted how caring staff were and found examples of staff who exceeded expectations to help people.
“The trust had also successfully implemented a number of positive changes in the emergency department. Changes had been made to the department’s physical environment to improve patient safety and experience, infection control and prevention was maintained, the service collected information about performance so it could improve, and patients were treated respectfully, with compassion and kindness.
“The dedicated work of staff deserves recognition, a number of improvements have been made at the most challenging time for hospital services, and this is to be commended.
“The trust’s leadership team is clear about the steps it needs to take to ensure further improvement takes place. We will continue to monitor the trust’s progress closely and will inspect again to check on whether necessary improvements have been made.”
CQC has told the trust it must make the following improvements:
- The trust must ensure that anaesthetists in maternity complete PROMPT (Practical Obstetric Multi-Professional Training) training.
- The trust must ensure that staffing levels in diagnostic imaging are adequate to provide safe care and treatment to patients in a timely way.
- The trust must be assured that the out of hours staffing arrangement is sustainable and robust to provide safe care and treatment to patients in diagnostic imaging.
A full report of the inspectors’ findings will be published on CQC’s website here.
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