The latest inspection report from Lincolnshire’s hospitals, issued by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) last month shows significant improvements in quality of care.
United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust (ULHT) was inspected by the CQC in March this year.
The inspection report, out now, shows that overall the Trust has improved from its previous rating of ‘inadequate’ and been moved into ‘requires improvement’.
Sustained improvements, including progress on recruitment of staff, ambulance handover times and a back to basics focus on quality of care, saw 72% of the Trust’s ratings coming out as ‘good’, which is an improvement on last time.
There were many examples of excellent practice cited in the report, from across all ULHT hospitals.
ULHT Chief Executive Jan Sobieraj said: “This report shows real progress and shows everyone, our patients, staff and stakeholders that we are clearly moving in the right direction to improved and sustained quality of care.
“I’m extremely proud of all our staff, who have worked together and taken on board the challenges we face – there is more work to do but we are in a better place than we were a year ago that’s for sure.
“At the time of the inspection, we were facing unprecedented winter challenges, particularly at our Pilgrim hospital in Boston. Our focus now will be to address the problems we know still exist and look to strengthen all our services as part of our continued 2021 strategy going forward.”
He recognised that work is still required on a number of services, including some at Pilgrim hospital in Boston which was still rated as ‘inadequate’ overall.
“We have now embarked upon an ambitious quality and safety improvement programme to address areas where improvements need to be made. This has 10 projects focussing on making rapid improvements in areas including paediatric services, safeguarding, medicines management, mortality and data quality.
“There is also a specific piece of work underway looking at Pilgrim A&E department, including triage, rapid assessment, staffing rotas and ensuring that the department rooms are used appropriately to improve patient safety and the quality of service we offer.
“I’m confident that this work will help us to become a ‘good’ Trust overall in the future.”
More detail of our quality improvement plan in the next edition of ULHTimes.
To view the full CQC report on ULHT, visit the CQC website here