Princess Alexandra remains as Requires Improvement

Following a Care Quality Commission inspection, the Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust has been rated as Requires Improvement, although improvements were recognised.

The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust is rated Requires Improvement overall as well as for whether its services are safe, effective and responsive. It is rated as Good for whether services are caring and well-led overall.

Improvements are needed in urgent and emergency services to ensure that staff keep detailed records of patient care and treatment, whilst the trust was told that all incidents in maternity must be reviewed in a timely way to promote learning and service improvement.

Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust received an Outstanding rating for caring for children and young people which has made their overall rating Good. Additionally, five of the six core services that were inspected in March and April have at least one area that has improved, including surgery whose overall rating also improves to Good.

Professor Ted Baker, CQC’s Chief Inspector of Hospitals, said: “Our return to The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust we found a number of improvements had been made and improvements we found during our previous inspection, at the end of 2017, had been maintained.

“However, there are areas where further work is needed and the trust must ensure it continues make changes that will lead to sustainable improvements, so that people receive the care they should be able to expect. In particular, the trust needed to ensure there were sufficient and suitably qualified staff available and that systems to guard against risks were fully embedded to ensure patients were protected from avoidable harm.

“We found the culture at the trust had been maintained and the senior leadership team was open and visible. We also found a number of outstanding practices and improvements, most notably in children and young people’s services. As a result this area is now rated as Outstanding for whether its service is caring. We have given our feedback to the trust and we will return to carry out further inspections to check on its progress with improvement.”

Lance McCarthy, chief executive of the trust, said: "I am pleased that the CQC has recognised the hard work and commitment of all of our people to providing high quality care for our patients. We have continued to make significant improvements to the quality of care we provide since we came out of quality special measures in March 2018. I am particularly delighted that our children and young people teams have been rated as Outstanding for Caring.

"We have an established quality improvement plan that is managed across all our services, both clinical and support and professional services, as we continue our drive towards achieving our vision of providing outstanding healthcare to our community."