Trust’s Care Quality Commission Reports Published

REPORTS into services provided by York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust have been published by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Patrick Crowley, Chief Executive, said: “We welcome publication of these reports and the opportunity to learn from external scrutiny of our organisation.

“The reports, without exception, rated our services as ‘Good’ for being Caring, and every single one of our staff should be proud of the CQC’s comments regarding their compassion and dedication, treating patients with dignity and respect, and of the open and honest manner in which staff approached the inspection.  

“It is also great to see such positive reports on our community services only three years since they transferred to the Trust. It is a phenomenal achievement in such a short time to find these services rated as ‘Good’ across the board.

“As an overall assessment, a single rating of ‘Requires Improvement’ for the whole organisation clearly cannot reflect the range of our services or the complexity of our organisation, nor can it give a detailed insight into the quality of the services we provide.

“We are a hair’s breadth away from an overall ‘Good’ rating, with three quarters of the scores as such. 

“When you look beyond the headline rating and read the reports and ratings in full, it is clear that there are many areas of excellent practice across all of our services, and these have been highlighted by the CQC.

“There are no areas of major concern and no areas at all are rated as inadequate.

“At the time of the inspection we were only two and a half years into our five year integration programme following the merger of York and Scarborough Trusts, and it is rewarding to see the progress we have made on the East Coast, with no areas rated as inadequate and many more ‘Good’ ratings than ‘Requires Improvement’. This is a major success and everyone involved should be congratulated, bearing in mind the CQC reports received prior to the integration.

“Nonetheless, with any comprehensive review of our services, there will be areas where improvements need to be made, and there are no surprises for us within the reports. Despite issues that have been raised nationally about the inspection process, we must accept the observations with humility and respond positively to the recommendations.

“The CQC’s overall assessment is, in the main, influenced by a small number of key themes which have been well documented previously. These include vacancies for nursing and medical staff, statutory and mandatory training compliance, and performance against some of the key national targets.

“The small number of actions identified by the CQC have either been completely addressed since the inspection, or have seen significant improvements made against them.

“I am confident that we are a safe, caring and effective organisation and this is without doubt confirmed in these reports.”  

• The CQC inspected the Trust as part of its planned inspection programme, carrying out an announced inspection visit between 16-20 March 2015.
• York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust acquired Scarborough and North East Yorkshire Healthcare NHS Trust in July 2012, bringing Scarborough and Bridlington Hospitals into the organisation. 
• The main overall rating for the Trust was Requires Improvement.
• For each report a rating of either outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate is given for each of the main clinical services for whether they are responsive, caring, well-led, effective and safe.

The pie charts here show the breakdown of these ratings overall for each of the domains (Caring, Effective, Responsive, Safe and well-led) and for the Trust overall

Responses to specific actions in the overall Trust report:

Nurse staffing: “We are confident that our staffing levels were safe at the time of the inspection, however to achieve this, we have relied on temporary and agency staff. This is the picture in many organisations and it is something we are addressing as a priority. In the six months since the inspection took place, we have recruited over 70 nurses to the organisation, due to start work this month,  and anticipate that we will recruit a further 60 in the next two to three months as part of our overseas recruitment campaign.”

Performance and waiting times: “Our performance against key targets such as 18 week waits and the four hour emergency access target is improving, following a period of intense pressure on the system and a particularly difficult winter. We are working with the whole health and social care system to ensure that this is sustainable.”

Statutory and mandatory training: “We recognise the importance of ensuring our staff have the support they need to complete their required training. Prior to the merger, York trust had a good rate of compliance with training, however records in community services and Scarborough Trust were not readily available and we therefore had to assume that compliance was low. At the time of the inspection we had recently introduced a new system for statutory and mandatory training in the Trust. This system allows staff to complete much of their training electronically, and, importantly, keeps an up to date record of their compliance.  We set ourselves a target of 75% compliance by December of this year, and at the time of the inspection we were on target to achieve this.

“The data that the inspectors saw was incomplete and would not have included much of the training that took place prior to the introduction of the new system. We are now ahead of our target, with current compliance at 89%”

08 October 2015