9 March 2023
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Pages 1 and 2 of this report relate to the hospital and the ratings of that location, from page 3 the ratings and information relate to maternity services based at North Manchester General Hospital.
We inspected the maternity service at North Manchester General Hospital as part of our national maternity inspection programme. The programme aims to give an up-to-date view of hospital maternity care across the country and help us understand what is working well to support learning and improvement at a local and national level.
We will publish a report of our overall findings when we have completed the national inspection programme.
In April 2021 maternity services at this hospital were acquired from Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust and all ratings for the hospital were inherited. This the first time maternity services have been inspected and rated since the acquisition.
We carried out an announced focused inspection of the maternity service, looking only at the safe and well-led key questions.
The inspection was carried out using a pre-inspection data submission and an on-site inspection where we observed the environment, observed care, conducted interviews with patients and staff, reviewed policies, care records, medicines charts and documentation.
Following the site visit, we conducted interviews with senior leaders, specialist staff and stakeholders. We held focus groups for staff of all grades and roles and reviewed feedback from women and families about the trust. We ran a poster campaign during our inspection to encourage pregnant women and mothers who had used the service to give us feedback regarding care. We analysed the results to identify themes and trends.
North Manchester General Hospital is 1 of 3 sites for maternity services for the trust. It comprises of a delivery suite with adjacent maternity theatres. There are post and antenatal wards, an antenatal assessment unit and maternity triage. There is a midwifery led unit, the Bluebell Birth Centre with 5 birthing rooms. Ante and postnatal clinics are also provided at this location.
The local maternity population come from areas of higher levels of deprivation than the national average with 30% in the most deprived decile compared to 14% nationally. A higher proportion of mothers were Asian or Asian British compared to the national averages.
Our rating of this hospital stayed the same. We rated it as requires improvement because:
- Our ratings of the maternity service did not change the ratings for the hospital overall. For maternity services we rated safe as inadequate and well-led as requires improvement and the hospital as requires improvement.
We also inspected 2 other maternity services run by Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. Our reports are here:
Wythenshawe Hospital – https://www.cqc.org.uk/location/R0A07
Saint Mary’s Hospital – https://www.cqc.org.uk/location/R0A05
Following this inspection, under Section 29A of the Health and Social Care Act 2008, we issued a warning notice to the provider. We took this urgent action as we believed a person would or may be exposed to the risk of harm if we had not done so.
How we carried out the inspection
You can find further information about how we carry out our inspections on our website: https://www.cqc.org.uk/what-we-do/how-we-do-our-job/what-we-do-inspection.