Chief Inspector of Hospitals publishes report on the quality of care provided by Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust

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

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection, which took place between 27 May and 7 June, 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 here.

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 community health services provided by Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust including, community health services for adults and children, services for young people and families, community inpatient services, end of life care, dentistry and minor injury units.

CQC found many areas of good practice, including:

• The Rapid Response Team provided an outstanding level of care and support to babies and young children, and their families, at home with acute illnesses.
• We saw examples of excellent needs assessment and care planning in children and young people’s services.
• In palliative and end of life care services, there was good multi-disciplinary team working throughout and staff were compassionate and committed to ensuring people received a good service.
• The Infant Feeding and Breast Feeding Team demonstrated an outstanding commitment to provide feeding advice and support to families from culturally diverse backgrounds in the Luton area.
• Dental decontamination and infection control facilities and processes were seen to be excellent and staff were passionate and caring about the people who used the dental service.

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

• The trust needs to assess and monitor the quality of all end of life care services provided, to include care after death, to ensure the protection of people using the service and others who may be at risk.
• Ensure adequate systems to monitor and prevent medicines omissions in inpatient wards.
• Continue to develop effective recruitment, caseload management, and staff support strategies to ensure satisfactory staffing levels in the district and community nursing teams. 
• 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.

"The values of honesty, empathy, ambition and respect were widely demonstrated by staff throughout the organisation and we were impressed by the clinical leadership in all services at the trust.

"However, there were a number of staff shortages in the community and district nursing team and the monitoring of records relating to medicines in inpatients wards was inadequate, as omissions were found.  

"While areas for improvement have been highlighted to the leadership at the trust, overall Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust is a good trust providing caring, effective and responsive services that are well led. The trust knows what action it now needs to take to make any improvements."

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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