CQC publishes report on Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has worked solidly to embed a number of the improvements we requested at our last inspection. I want to congratulate them for this work and their improvements at previous inspections against a backdrop of year on year increases in patient numbers.
Inspectors visited the trust from 11 to 13 February 2020, assessing the care and treatment received by patients.
On 16 March 2020, CQC suspended all routine inspections to support and reduce pressure on health and social care services during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, this inspection could not be completed in the usual way. Consequently, this report includes findings from four completed service-level inspections: urgent and emergency care, medical care, surgery and maternity.
Inspectors found improvements in all the services inspected. Medical care showed significant improvement and achieved an overall rating of Good. Maternity services retained their overall rating of Good, with improvements seen in safety. Urgent and emergency care and surgery did not change from the last inspection and remain rated as Requires Improvement.
A well-led inspection – which considers the leadership, management and governance of the organisation – was not completed.
CQC is only able to update trust’s overall ratings when a well-led inspection is completed. Therefore, Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust overall ratings are retained from CQC’s previous comprehensive inspection report, published in 2018, when it was rated Requires Improvement overall. The trust remains Good for being effective, caring and well-led and Requires Improvement for being safe and responsive.
Nigel Acheson CQC’s Deputy Chief Inspector for Hospitals in the South, said:
“Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has worked solidly to embed a number of the improvements we requested at our last inspection. I want to congratulate them for this work and their improvements at previous inspections against a backdrop of year on year increases in patient numbers.
“The trust has also taken on a number of failing services within the community to help support the local healthcare system. I am particularly pleased that during this inspection we were able to see the trust not only embedding improvements within its hospital-based services but also driving and embedding improvements in the new primary care services it has acquired.
“We fed our findings back to the trust and its leadership knows what it needs to do to bring about further improvements and we will return at a later date to complete the inspection process and to check on the progress that has been made.”
About the CQC
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