Close correlation between safety rating and overall rating, says chief inspector of hospitals

Published: 22 May 2014 Page last updated: 3 November 2022

Nine out of the 12 NHS trusts inspected earlier this year using CQC's new approach must provide safer services for patients, the chief inspector of hospitals told a conference today.

Professor Sir Mike Richards told the Patient Safety Congress that out of the acute NHS trusts inspected between January and March this year, eight were rated as "requires improvement" for safety and one as "inadequate". Four trusts received a "good" rating for safety. This contributed to an overall rating of either "requires improvement" or "inadequate" for nine out of the twelve NHS trusts.

Sir Mike was clear that these ratings are not representative of the NHS as a whole; this is because several of the trusts were selected for inspection as they were considered to have a higher than average risk based on the information available.

Sir Mike said: "The findings are based on just 12 inspections. What we found is that there is a close correlation between the rating a trust receives for safety and its overall rating. 

"Fewer hospitals were rated as good for safety than for effectiveness, caring, responsiveness or well-led. Out of the eight core services we looked at, the medical care service is more frequently rated as requiring improvement in safety than in any of the other services."

The safety of services is one of five key areas CQC looks at during every inspection, along with checking that services are effective, responsive, caring and well led.

NHS trusts will be inspected again to check on their progress and CQC will report on its findings.

The twelve trusts that were inspected, together with their safety and overall rating, are:

Out of the eight core services we looked at, the medical care service is more frequently rated as requiring improvement in safety than in any of the other services.

Sir Mike Richards