Improved rating for Isle of Wight NHS Trust

Isle of Wight NHS Trust has welcomed an improved rating by the Care Quality Commission after inspectors identified improvement in most of its services.

The report, which followed planned inspections of the trust’s services in May, sees the organisation rated as ‘Requires Improvement’ overall, having improved or maintained its rating in all five of the CQC’s inspection areas – safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led.

Amongst the achievements, the CQC highlighted staff members from the Patient Transport Service going above and beyond the call of duty to care for our patients, significant improvements in End of Life Care, progress in community services, and the Emergency Department rating having improved to ‘Requires Improvement’ and the conditions of a warning notice imposed in January 2019 were met.

In contrast, the trust received an ‘Inadequate’ rating for Mental Health services and is taking immediate action in response to concerns raised by the CQC.

Maggie Oldham, chief executive at Isle of Wight NHS Trust, said: “I want to thank all of our staff, our colleagues working in primary and social care, as well as our volunteers, patients and the local community for their support. It would not have been possible to start improving our services without them.

“Our improved rating from the CQC is welcome recognition of a great deal of hard work by a lot of people and I am particularly proud to be able to share the news that Community, End of Life Care, frontline ambulance services, NHS 111, and the Urgent Care Service have been rated ‘Good’. We of course recognise that there is still a lot of work to do. Everyone at the Trust is totally committed to delivering the improvement that local people rightly expect.”

Nigel Acheson, CQC’s Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals, said: “At this return visit to the Isle of Wight NHS Trust we found a number of improvements had been made. However, there are areas where further work is needed and the trust must ensure it continues to make changes that will lead to sustainable improvements, so that people receive the care they should be able to expect.

“Although there has been progress in addressing some of the immediate issues, we felt that it is still too early to judge their effectiveness and for that reason I believe the trust should remain in special measures for now. 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.

“Since our last inspection in January 2018 the trust had formed an experienced leadership team with the skills, abilities, and commitment for the potential to provide high-quality services. The culture at the trust had been improved. We have given our feedback to the trust and we will return to carry out further inspections to check on its progress with improvement.”