Care Quality Commission report published

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has published its report into services at York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust following an inspection between October 2022 and March 2023.

The CQC inspected Emergency and Urgent Care, Medicine and Maternity in both York and Scarborough hospitals, and looked at the ‘well-led’ key question for the Trust overall.

The Trust’s overall rating is Requires Improvement, which is unchanged from the last overall rating in 2019.

Simon Morritt, Chief Executive, York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said:

“We welcome the CQC’s findings. As is the case across the NHS we have been under sustained pressure and this has impacted our ability to consistently provide the standard of care we all want, which is reflected in the concerns highlighted by the CQC. Nevertheless, we accept the CQC’s findings and recognise that we have much more work to do to make sure all our services are of the high standard that our patients and staff expect.” 

“We were pleased that in giving a rating of ‘Good’ for the key question of ‘Care’, the CQC recognises the kindness and compassion of our staff who continue to put our patients first despite the most challenging of circumstances.

“I am also encouraged that the CQC found positive improvements against some of their previous concerns. This includes improvements in systems related to nutrition and hydration for patients on medical wards on both sites, and the impact that the introduction of our new electronic assessment system is already having on saving staff time and reducing risk.

“They also talked positively about the improvements to systems for managing demand within Scarborough emergency department, and it is fantastic to see that the overall rating for urgent and emergency care at Scarborough has been lifted to requires improvement.”

Dr Karen Stone, Medical Director, York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said:

“We continue to work with the CQC to address their recommendations and have plans to focus on the key priority areas where we know we need to continue to make sustained improvements.

“We responded immediately to the urgent findings identified at the time of the inspection, and in the months since the visits we have made positive progress against areas highlighted in the report.”

Examples of improvements since the inspections took place include:

• Key leadership changes have taken place in the past 12 months, both at Board level and in the way our services are structured and managed.
• Both emergency departments will soon benefit from state-of-the-art new facilities that not only vastly improve the environment but also enable the new acute care model to be adopted which will reduce delays, speed up assessment and better support the flow of patients through the hospital. The York team, who were working in much-reduced temporary facilities at the time of the inspections, will move in July and Scarborough in Spring next year.
• Digital documentation system has been rolled out to all adult wards for recording assessments on admission, giving increased visibility and oversight of risk assessments and freeing up nursing time.
• The Badgernet system has been introduced in maternity, moving away from paper records and increasing the quality of documentation and risk assessments.
• Significant international recruitment of nurses, midwives and allied health professionals, with a lot of work done to welcome staff from overseas into the organisation, including cultural awareness weeks.
• Nursing establishment review completed, with the first stage of investments implemented. The ‘safe care’ tool with the red flag system is also being used to identify areas most in need, and this has daily oversight.
• The Trust has invested in patient services operatives, a new role supporting nutrition and hydration on wards and release nursing time to care.
• Plans have been developed for the recruitment and training of scrub nurses for maternity theatres, and the new maternity theatre pathways are being designed.
• A comprehensive maternity improvement programme is in place to drive forward the actions identified by the CQC.
• Feedback from staff to the CQC was welcomed and is informing the trust-wide culture and leadership programme to help develop a more open and inclusive place to work, building on the work with staff to develop the trust’s values and behaviours.

30 June 2023