The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has told Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust improvements are needed in maternity services at Barnsley Hospital, after an inspection in April rated them as requires improvement.
The inspection was carried out as part of CQC’s national maternity services inspection programme. This will 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.
This is the first time maternity services at Barnsley Hospital have been rated as a standalone core service. Previously, maternity and gynaecology services were inspected and rated together.
As well as overall maternity services at Barnsley Hospital being rated requires improvement, so has safety. How well-led the service is, has been rated as good. Effective, caring and responsive were not looked at during this inspection.
The overall rating for Barnsley Hospital remains as good overall.
Carolyn Jenkinson, CQC’s deputy director of secondary and specialist healthcare said:
“When we inspected maternity services at Barnsley Hospital, it was encouraging to see leaders had the necessary skills and abilities to run the service. They also understood and managed the priorities and issues the service faced, and staff spoke highly of them. However, we identified areas where improvements still needed to be made.
“We found not all staff were up to date with their mandatory training, especially around safeguarding. However, leaders mitigated risks well and staff knew how to identify adults and children at risk of, or suffering significant harm, and worked well with other agencies to protect them. Additionally, staff routinely asked people about domestic abuse and their mental health. We also saw referrals were made when additional support was needed.
“Additionally, inspectors saw there hadn’t been any administrative staff since last May which meant that postnatal notes weren’t always easily available when babies needed to be re-admitted. We raised our concerns with the trust, they listened, and took action to fill the position.
“It is encouraging to see the efforts that leaders and staff at Barnsley Hospital have made to improve the quality of care. We will continue monitoring them to ensure they embed these improvements and build on them to ensure people are continuing to receive high quality care.”
Inspectors found:
- The service controlled infection risk well, the design, maintenance and use of facilities, premises and equipment kept people safe
- Staff assessed risks to women and birthing people, acted on them, and kept good care records
- The service managed medicines and safety incidents well and learned lessons from them
- Staff felt respected, supported and valued and were clear about their roles and accountabilities
- People could access the service when they needed it and did not have to wait too long for treatment
- Following the inspection, we received 439 feedback forms from women and birthing people who had recently used maternity services at the hospital, the vast majority was positive and often outstanding feedback
- Leaders were visible and approachable in the service, they had effective governance processes, identified, escalated, and managed risk effectively
- The service worked in partnership with their local Maternity Voice Partnership, engaged well with women and birthing people to make meaningful improvements.
However,
- Compliance to mandatory training, including safeguarding training was low. There was low compliance for midwifery appraisals, obstetric vacancies, pregnant women and people did not have access to their antenatal notes and separate postnatal notes were not always available for babies.