Improvements made at The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has found improvements in services provided by The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust at Pinderfields and Dewsbury hospitals.

Inspectors visited the trust in October 2017 to check that it had made significant improvements set out in a warning notice issued to the trust in June that identified concerns and areas for improvement.

At the time CQC found concerns with the lack of skilled staff, the effectives of the escalation and monitoring of deteriorating patients, extra capacity beds and late night bed moves affecting the privacy of patients and the monitoring and assessment of patients’ nutritional and hydration needs.

The latest inspection found that: staffing fill rates had generally increased across medical wards at both hospital sites; national early warning system (NEWS) scores were consistently recorded and escalated for patients who were reviewed; while there had been concerns about patients coming to harm as a result of falls, the falls risk assessments were consistently completed; and the use of extra capacity beds had significantly reduced since the time of the initial inspection.

There are also areas the trust needs to improve, including: staffing remained challenging in some areas, with some wards not meeting the 80 per cent fill rate; fluid and nutrition charts for patients that were reviewed at Dewsbury were not fully completed; and it still remained difficult to easily identify where an assessment of mental capacity had been made.

Sandra Sutton, interim head of hospital inspections for the North East and Cumbria, said: “Our latest inspection has seen some improvements; the trust has responded to the warning notice is progress – although the trust is aware that there are still a number of areas where it needs to improve.

“At the last inspection in May, we had identified a shortage of nursing staff. During this inspection we saw that the trust had committed to an international recruitment campaign that is expected to result in increased staffing by late 2018.

“There has been no reassessment of the trust’s rating which it remains as ‘requires improvement’. However, we will continue to work with the trust to ensure that the service continues to improve.”