England’s Chief Inspector of Hospitals has found improvement in the quality of services for patients during the last inspection of Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust. As a result of the inspection, the trust is now rated as Good overall.
A team of inspectors from the Care Quality Commission visited the trust in February and March to check the quality of five core services: maternity, outpatients, end of life care, community end of life care and community care services for children and young people. CQC also looked specifically at management and leadership to answer the key question: Is the trust well led?
The trust is now rated as Outstanding for being caring, Good for being effective, responsive to people’s needs and well-led, and Requires Improvement for being safe.
Full details of the ratings are given in the grid below and online at: http://www.cqc.org.uk/provider/RA9
Inspectors found particular improvements in the hospital’s end of life care and in community health services for children and young people. In acute end of life care, patients were treated with kindness, respect, dignity and compassion and were empowered and supported to manage their own health, care and wellbeing. Patients and those close to them received the emotional support they needed.
In community health services for children and young people it was clear that the services reflected the needs of the local population and were flexible, enabled choice and promoted continuity of care. A restructure of the speech and language therapy service had delivered significant improvements, and changes had been made to improve access to services.
In maternity, compassionate support was consistently provided to women, and those close to them. Women felt fully involved in all aspects of their care.
Placements were offered to paramedics in maternity so they could observe births and attend emergency skills and drills staff training. Staff told inspectors that these placements had received positive feedback from all those involved.
The Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Professor Ted Baker, said:
“Since we last inspected services at Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust the organisation has worked to make real improvements to those services where we previously had concerns and also to embed further improvements where the quality of care was already of a high standard. We found some areas of outstanding practice.
“I note that the trust has been using feedback from patients to inform wards about areas that need improving, allowing staff to take prompt action to improve the experience of patients.
“Some concerns remain, including the need for the trust to strengthen the process for learning from deaths and ensure that all staff have completed mandatory training.
“We expect the board, to continue to work on these areas on behalf of all their patients. I congratulate all the staff on the progress that we have seen.”