Improvements made at Newark Hospital

It’s official – all 14 areas of Newark Hospital visited by hospital regulators in their recent inspection are rated Good.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has today announced its findings for Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Newark Hospital.

Inspectors visited Newark Hospital in April 2018 and asked if the services were safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led, with each area rated as either Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement or Inadequate. An overall rating also given.

This is the first time SFH has been inspected under the new CQC process and only certain areas are reviewed each year with one inspection per year. In the previous inspection process all areas were reviewed in one large inspection every three years.

Overall the Trust was found to be rated as Good. At Newark Hospital, every area the inspectors saw was rated Good in 2018, however as not all the areas were inspected, ratings from previous inspections from 2014 and 2015 were included and mean the overall rating remains Requires Improvement.

Richard Mitchell, Chief Executive said: “The CQC noted lots of progress at Newark Hospital in the areas they inspected and we are now focused on improving its overall rating to Good in 2019.

“I am delighted with our overall rating of Good andthat Inspectors specifically recognised that the Trust was Outstanding in the Caring domain. This rating indicates further progress has been made at Sherwood. I was particularly pleased the CQC said “Staff respected patients’ privacy and dignity at all times and always showed compassion and kindness…Throughout the inspection we found a demonstrable culture of high quality, sustainable care which was delivered across specialties, divisions, trust locations and staff groups.”

“Whilst we may be disappointed that our safe rating is still Requires Improvement, this is because of the services not visited in 2018 and who have ratings that now date back four years. All ten services rated in 2018 received a Good rating for safety. I am confident that if we continue to improve and continue to work closely with the CQC and NHS Improvement, this rating will change in our 2019 inspection.

“This marks the beginning of the next stage on our journey at Sherwood. Our last two staff surveys indicate more staff than even before enjoy working at Sherwood with eight out of ten staff recommending us as a place to work and nine out of ten recommending us as a place to receive care. This year’s inpatient survey shows 84% of our inpatients rated their overall experience as good.

“We want to consistently achieve two things at Sherwood. We want patients to receive the level of care we would want our friends and family to receive and we want colleagues to be treated in the way we want to be treated. I believe we are making progress and the CQC report is another indicator of this.  

“It is evident we need to improve further and whilst we are pleased with this report this information confirms our journey has not concluded. We will use the report in conjunction with the other information we regularly look at and we will work with the CQC and NHS Improvement to improve further. I believe we have already made progress since the visit in April 2018 and I look forward to demonstrating this to the CQC in our inspection next year.”

Key messages from the CQC report for Newark Hospital were:

• We saw staff providing compassionate care throughout our visit. Patients spoke highly of the care they received.
• When concerns were raised or things went wrong, the approach to reviewing and investigating causes had improved.
• Sharing learning from incidents had improved with a culture that encouraged shared learning.
• There were effective clinical governance procedures and quality measurement processes.
• The trust had effective systems for identifying risks, planning to eliminate or reduced them, and coping with both the expected and unexpected.

Wendy Saviour, Managing Director of Nottinghamshire Health and Social Care said: “Significant improvements have been made by the Trust and it’s clear that the commitment and compassion of staff are at the heart of the CQC’s findings. This is another example of how real progress is being made across Nottinghamshire with transforming health and care services for the benefit of our communities. This latest success follows a series of inspections at Nottingham University Hospitals, Nottinghamshire Healthcare, Nottingham CityCare Partnership and Nottingham Treatment Centre over the last two years, all of which have achieved ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’ CQC ratings.”