The Care Quality Commission has rated Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust as Requires Improvement overall – though there have been improvements at the trust.
Imperial was rated Requires Improvement for being safe and responsive. It was rated Good for being effective, caring and well-led, following the inspection in February 2019.
The Care Quality Commission has rated all of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust’s maternity services as Outstanding and all of its children and young people’s, neonatal and critical care services as Good. As a result of the improved ratings, Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital is now rated overall as Outstanding, up from Good. There were not enough services inspected at this time to change the Trust’s overall rating, which remains as Requires Improvement.
The trust provides a broad range of services across three acute hospitals, two specialist hospitals and seven renal centres. CQC inspected four of the nine core services provided by the trust. It inspected Critical Care at St. Mary’s Hospital, Charing Cross Hospital and Hammersmith Hospital. It also inspected Maternity services at St. Mary’s Hospital and Queen Charlottes and Chelsea Hospital and inspected Children’s and Young People’s services at St. Mary’s Hospital and Hammersmith Hospital. Neonatal services at Queen Charlottes and Chelsea Hospital were also inspected.
The trust had a vision for what it wanted to achieve and workable plans to turn it into action developed with involvement from staff, patients, and key groups representing the local community.
Managers across the trust promoted a positive culture that supported and valued staff, creating a sense of common purpose based on shared values.
The trust engaged well with patients, staff, the public and local organisations to plan and manage appropriate services and collaborated with partner organisations effectively.
The trust should ensure:
- Emergency equipment is checked consistently.
- Consider improvements to the hospital estate including lifts and the temperature of some maternity ward areas.
- Review the cleaning provision to, prevent the risk of infection.
- Inspectors did find evidence of some outstanding care. This included:
- In the maternity service, staff provided compassionate individualised care. Staff provided extensive support to patients and their relatives and worked hard to meet the holistic needs of their patients through emotional and practical measures.
- The maternity service was especially caring and responsive to parents who had suffered a loss, such as miscarriage, stillbirth or neonatal death. The services provided extensive emotional support and resources to bereaved women and was committed to continually improving the care and services they provided for bereaved parents.
- The bereavement midwife had developed a bereavement midwifery group in the UK and engaged well with stakeholders such as local MPs, NHS England, local charities and the Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Society.
- A translation icon on the trust website could translate vital information on the website to 103 languages from different ethnicity and continents such as Turkish, Polish, Japanese, Greek, Swahili, Yoruba and Urdu.
- The critical care service provided extensive opportunities for learning and professional development for nursing staff.
- A ‘what matters’ board had been introduced on to cardiac ICU. This was placed on the headboard where relatives’ patients and nurses could write patient’s likes, dislikes, hobbies, what mattered to them such as pets, football team, sport, pastimes and improve their emotional wellbeing during admission.
England’s Chief Inspector of Hospital’s, Professor Ted Baker said: “Although Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust remains at an overall rating of Requires Improvement, we have found numerous improvements at the trust, including examples of outstanding care.
“The trust is now rated Good for being well-led which is a reflection of the progress made by the executive and management team - before it was Requires Improvement.”
NHS Improvement has rated Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust as Good overall for it uses its Use or Resources. The combined CQC quality and NHSI Use of Resources rating is Good.
You can read the reports in full when they appear on the CQC website by clicking at www.cqc.org.uk/provider/RYJ
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