CQC warns Medway NHS Foundation Trust to make improvements to maternity and midwifery services at Medway Maritime Hospital

23 October 2013

CQC warns Medway NHS Foundation Trust to make improvements to maternity and midwifery services at Medway Maritime Hospital

The Care Quality Commission has told Medway NHS Foundation Trust that it must take urgent action to improve the safety and welfare of women using maternity and midwifery services at Medway Maritime Hospital.

CQC has issued three formal warnings to the trust following an unannounced inspection at the hospital in Gillingham in August at which it failed to meet any of the six standards checked.

The inspection was carried out by a team of five CQC inspectors, one compliance manager, two pharmacist inspectors and four clinical advisors who visited the maternity wards, delivery suite, antenatal clinic, and three locations in the community, over the space of four days and one evening. In each area of the unit the team looked to see if the service was safe, effective, caring, well-led, and responsive to people’s needs. The team also held focus groups with expectant and new mothers.

The warning notices set out the hospital’s failure to meet national regulations in three specific areas:

• Staffing
• Supporting workers
• Assessing and monitoring the quality of service provision

A full report from the inspection has been published on the CQC website today. Read the report here.

Adrian Hughes, Regional Director of CQC in the South, said,

“While patients and relatives we spoke to said that the care they received was good, we have serious concerns about the care and treatment that women have been receiving in maternity and midwifery services at Medway Maritime Hospital. The report we have published today shows that the trust needs to deal with staffing levels as a matter of priority – and also to support the midwives who already work there better to perform their roles.

“We found that governance systems and management oversight of the services were not good enough, and this needs to change.”

Among CQC’s findings:

• While women were involved in decisions about their birth and where it took place, there wasn’t a clear pathway to follow to access antenatal care when they found out they were pregnant. This resulted in delays for some women in accessing this care.
• There were insufficient numbers of midwives, both in the hospital and in the community which presented a particular problem in postnatal care, where midwives were struggling to keep up with demand due to lack of staff.
• Inspectors found some poor medicines management practice.
• Staff training programmes were available but were not completed satisfactorily by all staff; midwives in the community were unable to access training easily due to ineffective IT systems, and hospital and community midwives said they did not have time to carry out on-going training programmes and felt unsupported in their job roles.
• Systems of governance and management oversight were inadequate. There was poor communication between different directorates.
• The hospital did not have a service delivery plan for the maternity services, and had not taken into account the changing demographics in the area and how to meet the needs of women in the future.

Adrian Hughes continued,

“The treatment and care provided by Medway NHS Foundation Trust has already been identified by Professor Sir Bruce Keogh and his team as being of concern – and the trust has been placed in special measures by the Secretary of State on that basis. We are committed to returning to the trust in due course to check whether general improvements required by that process have been made.

“In the meantime, our inspectors will return unannounced in the near future to check that the hospital has made the changes required by the warning notices.”

ENDS

For further information please contact the CQC press office on 0207 448 9239 or out of hours on 07917 232143.

NOTES TO EDITORS

At the inspection, maternity and midwifery services at Medway Maritime Hospital were failing to meet the following standards:

• Respecting and involving people who use services
• Care and welfare of people who use Services
• Management of medicines
• Staffing
• Supporting workers
• Assessing and monitoring the quality of service provision