Guy’s and St Thomas’ rated Good by CQC

The trust was rated Outstanding for being caring and well-led. It was rated Good for being responsive and effective and Requires Improvement for being safe, following the inspection that took place in April and May 2019. The trust was previously rated Good overall.

 

On this occasion CQC inspected adult community services, which had previously been rated as Requires Improvement, but has now been rated Outstanding. Inspectors also visited maternity services at St Thomas’ Hospital and outpatients’ services at both Guy’s and St Thomas’, which included two satellite dialysis units.

 

Inspectors found evidence of Outstanding practice at both Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital. This included in Outpatients Services, staff from both the diabetes and colorectal clinics won awards for academic work based on the trust’s values. 

 

In Adult Community Services the trust had developed Integrated Care, a strategic business unit formally launched in 2019. A range of programmes were developed including, the appointment of nursing associates as the trust rolled-out the neighbourhood nursing initiative, community teams linked to local care networks and the development of new roles such as the extensivist. This is a clinician who works with patients in both the hospital and community and supports them if they need to go into hospital.

 

The speech and language therapists sought to address the continued increase in referrals for swallowing difficulties for residents in care homes, by designing new ways of working. This included participating in the care homes’ multidisciplinary team meetings. This enabled staff to deliver training and awareness and meant the referrals were appropriately managed.

 

The trust was led by a highly skilled and credible team of knowledgeable people. They were aware of areas requiring improvement.

 

There was a very strong positive culture, which focused on patients and getting it right for people who used the service as well as staff working within the services. The safety and wellbeing of staff and patients was a high priority and measures had been taken to promote positive outcomes for staff.

 

There was good oversight of the arrangements with partners and third-party providers, which enabled the trust to promote and further develop co-ordinated and person-centred care, including mental health needs. Areas of poor performance and risks were captured on the organisational risk register. Risks were continually reviewed and were acted upon in a considered way.

 

England’s Chief Inspector of Hospital’s, Professor Ted Baker, said: “There is a good standard of care at Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust - we rated it Outstanding for being caring and well-led.

 

“The only area that didn’t get at least a Good rating was in the safe category, but I expect with the leadership the trust now has that this area will improve in the future.”

 

You can read the reports in full when they appear on the CQC website by clicking at: www.cqc.org.uk/provider/RJ1

 

NHS Improvement has rated Guy’s and St Thomas’ as Good overall for its Use of Resources. The combined CQC quality and NHSI Use of Resources rating is Good.

 

Ends

 

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