Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has received its Care Quality Commission (CQC) report following inspections in May, June and July of this year.
Unannounced inspections took place at urgent and emergency care at Royal Preston Hospital and Chorley and South Ribble Hospital, as well as medical care, and surgery at Royal Preston Hospital. A focused inspection of maternity services was also undertaken as part of CQC’s national maternity services inspection programme before inspectors also looked at how well-led the trust is overall.
Overall the Trust was rated as requires improvement. Safe, effective and responsive domains maintained requires improvement ratings; well-led moved from good to requires improvement and caring was re-rated as good.
Of the 17 domains inspected at Preston, seven have maintained their rating as good with five areas remaining as requires improvement. Three areas, including responsive in surgery, effective in urgent and emergency services, and safe in maternity, saw their rating go from good to requires improvement with surgery (effective) and medical care (well-led) improving from requires improvement to good.
At Chorley, of the seven domains inspected, five areas maintained their good rating and maternity (safe) and urgent and emergency services (safe) are now rated as requires improvement.
The report recognises that staff across the Trust felt supported, respected, and valued, services were promoting equality and diversity in daily work, and the Trust was providing opportunities for career development.
The CQC found areas of outstanding practice across the Trust, particularly in maternity services at both Royal Preston and Chorley & South Ribble Hospitals and within the emergency department at Royal Preston and noted the outstanding work of our Team Development and Engagement (TED) tool, which has been recognised by NHS England as an example of excellent practice for leadership development and continuous improvement.
Faith Button, Interim Chief Executive at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said:
“Our patients and staff remain at the heart of all that we do, so I am very pleased that despite the challenges we face we continue to be rated good for caring across our hospitals and that the majority of staff feel valued, supported and respected.
“As a Trust we recognise the improvements that we need to make and will continue to work with our leaders, their teams and system partners to ensure standards of services are met and to involve our wider stakeholders in our decision making so that we continue to improve and shape services together.
“We are pleased that the CQC recognises the good and outstanding work of our teams as well as identifying where we need to make improvements. I know that our teams are dedicated to continuing to work hard to keep improving our services to be the best they can be for their patients, colleagues and our local communities.”
Peter White, Chair at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, added:
“As a health system in Lancashire and South Cumbria, we have an ambition for all Providers to be rated as good overall by the CQC. This means that as a Trust we need to continue on our journey towards providing good and ultimately outstanding services at both Royal Preston and Chorley and South Ribble Hospitals. There is still more work to do to ensure they are truly great places to be cared for and to work in, but I firmly believe that we have strong plans in place and the right teams to deliver them.”
You can read the full report on the CQC website here.
