The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has changed the safety rating of Croydon University Hospital maternity services, run by Croydon Health Services NHS Trust, from requires improvement to good following an inspection , in December.
This inspection was carried out as part of CQC’s national maternity services inspection programme. The programme aims to provide an up to date view of the quality of hospital maternity care across the country, and a better understanding of what is working well to support learning and improvement at a local and national level.
Following this focused inspection, as well as the improvement in safety, maternity services remain rated as good overall and for being well-led.
How effective, caring and responsive services are, were not inspected and remain rated as good.
The ratings for both Croydon University Hospital and Croydon Health Services NHS Trust, who run the hospital are unchanged by this inspection. It remains requires improvement overall and also for being safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led
Carolyn Jenkinson, CQC’s Deputy Director of Secondary and Specialist Healthcare, said:
“When we visited maternity department at Croydon University Hospital, we were very pleased to find that safety had improved including the management of incidents and learning lessons from them.
“The team engaged well with black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) women and staff and worked together to see how services could be further improved.
“We saw staff at all levels were committed to continually improving the service. This included working with women especially those in black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) community to plan more effective services and were committed to making any necessary improvements.
“Its leaders were focused on the needs of women receiving care and people could access the service when they needed.
“There were issues with some aspects of the service, relating to the storage of some medicines, however the team were aware of this and had started to make changes to improve how these were stored.
“We will continue to monitor the service closely, including through future inspections, to ensure women are receiving a high standard of care.”
During the inspection CQC found:
- The service had enough staff on each shift to keep woman and babies safe
- Staff held regular and effective multidisciplinary meetings to discuss and improve the provision of care to women using the service
- The trust had a non-executive director (NED) with responsibility as maternity safety champion. We spoke with the NED, who seemed knowledgeable about the problems facing the service, notably those related to recruiting, retention, and ensuring that women's perspectives were promoted. The maternity safety champions meeting minutes showed a healthy discussion regarding safety issues, performance and feedback.