Chief Inspector of Hospitals publishes report on the quality of care provided by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust

England's Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Professor Sir Mike Richards, has published his first report on the quality of care provided by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection, which took place between 29 April and 2 May,  found staff were caring and compassionate and that, in general, the trust provided responsive and effective care and was well led.

Patients received good care and treatment, but CQC also highlighted some areas where the trust must improve. Reports relating to the services inspected are published at Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust.

This was one of CQC’s new-style inspections which include larger teams, made up of specialist nurses and therapists as well as people who use services as well as CQC’s own inspectors, to look at health services provided in the community.

Inspectors looked at a range of mental health and community health services provided by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust including, adult psychiatric admission wards, psychiatric intensive care units, forensic services (including the high secure service at Rampton Hospital), child and adolescent mental health services, learning disability services, community mental health services, older people’s mental health, specialist eating disorder services, community health services for adults with long-term conditions and for children and families and end of life care.

CQC found many areas of good practice, including:

• Interactions between staff and service users were positive and respectful in all clinical areas that CQC visited.
• The Involvement Centre, which enables service users and carers to influence the development of services, and the Recovery College, which provides recovery focused educational courses, are both exemplary.
• The trust leadership development programme contributed to a vision and set of values shared throughout the trust.
• The paediatric liaison service based at the Queens Medical Centre was seen to be both innovative and excellent.
• A record of incidents was on display on each ward so people could see how the trust was monitoring and managing the safety of people using its services.
• People aged over 75 received a follow-up appointment from the community health service within 48 hours of discharge from hospital to ensure they had the medication they needed, and so staff could advise on how to prevent their re-admission to hospital.
• A family nurse partnership team provided intensive support to teenage mothers before their child was born and for the following 22 months, meaning they were given support to develop their coping and parenting skills.

CQC also found some areas for improvement at the trust, including:

• The trust must improve care planning and the monitoring of physical health of people with a learning disability who are receiving inpatient care
• Work must be done to improve the safety of some wards.  Inspectors found a number of potential ligature points in the longer stay wards at Broomhill House, Newark Community Rehabilitation Unit, Mansfield and Thorneywood Mount - except for Bracken House.
• There was no local policy for medicines management and there were no pharmacy or departmental audits to check medicines had been managed appropriately and administered accurately and safely in the Children’s Development Centre at Nottingham City Hospital.
• The trust must ensure the welfare and safety of patients at the Arnold Lodge medium secure forensic unit by undertaking four hourly medical reviews of patients in seclusion.

Professor Sir Mike Richards, Chief Inspector of Hospitals, said: “On all of our inspections, inspectors ask whether a service is safe, effective, caring, responsive to people’s needs, and well-led.

“We found Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust was effective and responsive and that it was generally safe. We found the trust was well led and that throughout all of the services we visited we met and observed staff who were very caring and compassionate.  We were particularly impressed with the Recovery College and the Involvement Centre.

“Over all this is a good trust and, while areas for improvement have been highlighted to the trust, the trust knows what action it now needs to take and it has already made a good start on this.”

CQC has asked the trust to send us a report that says what action they are going to take to make improvements.

Ends

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