News | Hospitals report
downsmail.co.uk Hospitals need improvements
quickly, says inspection team How the individual hospitals fared
MAIDSTONE and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust has been told its two hospitals need to improve. The inspection by the Care Qual-
ity Commission noted that while the trust’s services were good in terms of caring, all other areas required im- provement, with its leadership deemed inadequate. The inspection team, which in- cluded doctors, nurses, hospital managers and members of the pub- lic, visited the hospitals in Maid- stone and Pembury over three days in October and also made unan- nounced visits. The CQC’s chief inspector of hos-
pitals, Professor Sir Mike Richards, said: “Quick work was needed to improve the governance of the trust and of a number of the core services we inspected. While the trust ac- knowledged immediately that these improvements needed to be made when we told them so, we should not have needed to tell them – which highlights how much this work is needed. “The trust has told us it has lis-
MAIDSTONE HOSPITAL Overall: requires improvement. Maternity and gynaecology: good. Urgent care, medical care, sur- gery, children’s care, end-of-life care and outpatient services: require improvement. Critical care: inadequate.
tened to our inspectors’ findings and begun to take action where it is re- quired.We will return in due course to check that the improvements we have identified have been made.” Inspectors noted both hospitals
were visibly clean with falling infec- tion rates, and patients felt they had been given sufficient information to make informed decisions about their treatment. However, they found that patient
flow across the trust was poor. Pa- tients deemed fit to be discharged from intensive care frequently expe- rienced delays in being transferred to award and scheduled operations
TUNBRIDGE WELLS HOSPITAL Overall: requires improvement. All core services: require improvement, apart from critical care, which was rated inadequate.
were cancelled due to a lack of avail- able beds. While levels of nursing staff were generally good, medical cover in the intensive care unit was not consis- tent with national standards and cre- ated a risk to patients. There were not enough single rooms at Maid- stone hospital either, which had an impact on patient privacy and the dignity of patients, particularly those on an end-of-life pathway. Inspectors have told the trust it
must ensure adequate consultant cover at weekends in the intensive care unit (ICU) in TunbridgeWells Hospital and people should not be
delayed for more than four hours when a decision has been taken to admit them or to discharge
them.As far as possible, patients should not be discharged at night. At Maidstone Hospital, the trust
must ensure that sufficient ward rounds take place in the ICU, that people are admitted or discharged within four hours, and that patients are not moved to other wards at night. The governance structure in the unit must be improved to sup- port better multi-disciplinary work- ing by clinical staff. Glenn Douglas, chief executive of
the trust, pointed out that outstand- ing practice noted by the CQC in- cluded the Maidstone Birth Centre, maternity services at Tunbridge Wells, work on dementia care and the trust’s breast care service. He added: “We are disappointed not to be rated good on this occasion and have taken immediate steps to ad- dress the actions within this report. “We welcome the CQC’s recom- mendations and are driving through improvements for our patients.”
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