England's Chief Inspector of Hospitals has published his latest report on Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission.
The trust is rated as Requires Improvement overall. It is rated Good for providing services that are caring and responsive and Requires Improvement for providing safe, effective and well-led services as a result of the inspection in May and June 2016.
The trust was last inspected in April 2014 when it was told it needed to make improvements to its incident reporting and learning from incidents, ensuring that staff had the appropriate safeguarding training and improving the standard of its record keeping and IT systems.
Since that time there have been a number of changes to senior staff and a concerted effort to improve the culture and support for staff at the trust.
Professor Sir Mike Richards CQC Chief Inspector of Hospitals said:
“It was evident that the trust had sought to address the findings of our last inspection and improvements had been made in some areas.
“We found that improvements were needed in end of life care, maternity, urgent care services and dentistry.
“There were significant gaps in the management of medications at the trust, its medicine strategy expired in 2013 and we were not provided with an updated copy.
“Progress had been slow with the improvements needed in some areas and there were still services where more work was needed. Among these were the heathy child programme, the development of the end of life care strategy and the implementation of IT systems that were consistent across the trust.
“We have highlighted the areas where the trust needs to make further changes and its leadership knows what it must now do to ensure any improvements are made. We will continue to monitor the trust’s progress and this will include further inspections.”
The trust has been told it must:
- Ensure the trust medicines strategy and standard operating policy is up to date.
- Ensure there is a trust wide vision for end of life care services, which is in line with national guidelines and recommendations.
- Staff in maternity services must have the necessary competencies, knowledge, skills and experience in order to deliver care and treatment safely during a homebirth.
Inspectors identified several areas of outstanding practice including:
- The Parallel Service, in Bolton, offers an adolescent health service for young people up to the age of 19. Practitioners work closely with school nursing and other young people’s services to meet the health needs of young people on issues affecting this age group, such as sexual health and contraception, smoking, substance misuse, relationships, bullying, food and weight problems. Inspectors found staff in this service to be passionate and committed.
- The trust operates an urgent care walk-in service with North West Ambulance (NWAS) service which is designed to avoid unnecessary hospital admission. The service had been judged by NWAS to be the highest performing service in the North West
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