Neil Cox, CQC deputy director of operations south, explains the notice issued to the East Kent Hospital Trust following inspections
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 First things first, we found that frontline staff were doing their very best to provide
00:04 really good care to people in difficult circumstances, but those staff spoke to us
00:08 about there being a bit of a disconnect between the board and frontline staff
00:12 and issues around patient flow through the hospital with a struggle. So specifically,
00:17 we found that leaders understood the priorities and issues that the Trust had, but they didn't
00:24 always take the action needed to resolve them, and a lot of the staff we spoke to told us there
00:29 was often this disconnect between what was going on the frontline and the board itself.
00:32 And in terms of the emergency departments that we looked at, both the William Harvey and the
00:38 Queen Elizabeth Queen Mother, we found that there was a lack of ownership of the pressures faced
00:43 by those emergency departments themselves. For the William Harvey Hospital in medical care,
00:51 we found that the overall rating stayed the same, it was a required improvement,
00:57 but two of the key questions in caring and well-led had gone down to required improvement.
01:02 So actually they'd stayed the same overall. In children and young persons services for
01:08 the William Harvey as well, overall the rating had stayed the same, it requires improvement.
01:16 And for the Queen Elizabeth Queen Mother, there was a decrease in the overall rating for older
01:23 persons care to require improvement, but children and young persons had actually improved to good.
01:28 And there were a number of issues around each of those services that led us to that rating.
01:35 So we issued a warning notice to ensure that the Trust is aware of and concentrate on the areas
01:41 that we have concerns, and that's where we need to make sure we go back and check that those
01:45 required improvements have been made. The leadership team know what they need to do,
01:50 and they need to move at pace to get the improvements that we want to see put in place.
01:54 So although the leadership team is newly formed, we engage with them regularly to understand
02:01 and monitor the Trust to make sure they're making the improvements that are needed.