Mark Pugh - IW NHS Trust

IW NHS Trust respond to CQC inspection reports

This in from the IW NHS Trust in response to yesterday’s report from the Chief Inspector of hospitals. Ed


Findings of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) Inspection of services provided by Isle of Wight NHS Trust were published yesterday.

The CQC has published four reports into their inspection of ambulance, community, hospital and mental health services provided by Isle of Wight NHS Trust. The reports are:

  • Hospital and Ambulance Services;
  • Community Health Services;
  • Mental Health Services; and a
  • Quality Report, summarising the above three reports

The CQC found that all the services they inspected across the Trust were caring and that staff communicated with and supported people in a compassionate way. The inspectors identified many areas of good practice – 77 (75%) in total compared to 24 (23%) areas where improvement is required and only two (2%) which were ‘inadequate’. Many patients told the Inspectors that their experience was positive.

‘Improvement required’
Mental health services, the ambulance service and most hospital services did well. However improvement is required in medical and end of life care and more broadly across community services, areas the Trust identified to the 77 Inspectors when they arrived for their announced four day inspection between 3rd and 6th June 2014.

Chief Executive of Isle of Wight NHS Trust Karen Baker said:

“These reports provide a fair and balanced assessment of our complex organisation and where we are right now. We acknowledge and accept that overall Isle of Wight NHS Trust requires improvement. There are though a lot of positives in relation to the ratings themselves – seven out of ten of the individual areas inspected were rated as good. Our staff and the Trust as a whole approached the inspection in an open and honest way. I think our staff should be really proud of the fact that the CQC rated us good overall for providing services which were caring and gave special mention to a number of outstanding areas – our mental health, ambulance and some hospital services did particularly well.

“This is the first time the CQC have inspected all four services – ambulance, community, hospital and mental health – together and the methodology for ambulance inspections is still being developed. Our services are safe but the overall rating – ‘requires improvement’ – means that we have more improvement work to do. The CQC have provided us with a clear view of what is required by our regulator to achieve a ‘good’ rating.

“We have action plans in place to address all the issues identified and will be reporting back to the CQC on 31st October 2014. Due to the ‘Requires Improvement’ rating our application to become a Foundation Trust will automatically be delayed by at least 6 months – time we will use to continue to improve services for patients and to further develop the arrangements for our Trust membership which now exceeds 4,000.”

Professor Stephen Dunn, Director at the NHS Trust Development Authority said:

“We are confident that the Isle of Wight has identified the areas that it needs to improve in and will continue to develop its services across the board. They have some key improvements to put in place before they can progress toward Foundation Trust status.

“Our focus is on making sure that the Trust has access to the right support to help them improve in the areas that the CQC have identified.”

The majority of services provided by Isle of Wight NHS Trust are commissioned and funded by Isle of Wight Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), NHS England and Isle of Wight Council.