This in from the Isle of Wight NHS Trust in response to the damning CQC Report. Ed
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has today published a report on the quality of care provided by the Isle of Wight NHS Trust. The Trust’s overall rating is “inadequate” and as a result of the CQC report the Trust will be placed in special measures.
The CQC assesses services in five areas; safety, responsiveness, leadership, effectiveness and caring. In the case of the Isle of Wight NHS Trust the CQC rated safety, responsiveness and leadership as being “inadequate” and effectiveness as being “requires improvement”.
In the context of whether staff are caring the CQC rated the Trust as being “good”.
The Trust Chair, Eve Richardson, said,
“This report is highly critical of the health services provided by this Trust. I want to be clear that the Trust accepts this report without reservation. We have let down our patients and our local community and on behalf of the Trust board and our staff I apologise unreservedly for this failure. Our sole focus now is to absorb the lessons contained within this report, to develop, with our partners, an effective and comprehensive improvement programme and to ensure it is implemented as swiftly as possible.”
CEO stood down ahead of report being published
Last month Karen Baker, the former chief executive of the Isle of Wight NHS Trust, decided to stand down from her role and executive medical director, Dr Mark Pugh, has been appointed acting chief executive.
The Trust Board expects to confirm the appointment of an interim Chief Executive very soon and will then begin the process of recruiting a new, permanent Chief Executive.
Dr Pugh said,
“We now have to ensure that we improve leadership throughout the organisation from board level through to service level. We are receiving valuable assistance from our new Improvement Director, Philippa Slinger, who has been appointed by NHS Improvement to support the Trust and we have already begun work on the development of a robust and achievable plan for major and rapid improvement.
“We will ensure that staff are clear about their role and actively involved in the delivery of meaningful improvement. We will be seeking the support of partners on the Island and mainland to help us.”
Service improvements
While the development of a comprehensive improvement plan remains to be completed, the Trust has made a number of service improvements since the CQC inspection visits at the end of 2016 and early 2017. It has:
- Begun the process of recruiting more substantive staff and reducing its use of agency staff.
- Established a mental health improvement group to tackle the main challenges in mental health services.
- Recruited two psychiatrists and a Head of Operations for the mental health service.
- Set aside £600,000 in 2017/18 for improvements to buildings used by mental health services in order to make them safe.
- Started to recruit a Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development to help tackle cultural problems within the Trust.
- Begun implementation of new arrangements to prevent multiple bed moves within the hospital.
- Increased nurse staffing levels in a number of areas.
- Improved the storage and security of medicines in a number of areas.
- Reviewed the results of the 2016 staff survey and agreed that priorities for the coming year will include a) tackling harassment, bullying and abuse b) continuous improvement of communications and c) improved leadership.
Image: © Used with the kind permission of Auntie P
