THE Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust has been rated as “inadequate” by regulators the Care Quality Commission (CQC). The Trust has now been placed into Special Measures and will be receiving a package of support from NHS Improvement. This includes the support of a dedicated Improvement Director; who has already started to work with the Trust.

The CQC found issues regarding the hospital’s capacity, performance in the Emergency Department and the resultant delays in admitting and discharging patients, staffing vacancies and some systems and processes.

Chief Executive, Phil Morley said, “We are of course disappointed with this rating, we know that we deliver good care here and that patients have good outcomes from their treatment at PAH. We know that the hospital isn’t perfect, our Emergency Department, like many others across the country, is very busy and capacity across the hospital means that too frequently patients have unacceptable delays. However, our patients should be in no doubt that our staff are 100% committed to delivering good care, we were pleased this was recognised by the CQC.”

The CQC rated Maternity and Gynaecology services as “outstanding”, one of the few in the country to have achieved this. The CQC found many areas to praise identifying good practice during their inspection, including a rating of “good” for caring.

The CQC said, “staff providing both maternity and gynaecology care were dedicated, compassionate, caring and consistently went beyond the call of duty to deliver the best experience possible for the women.” The CQC also recognised the significant improvements in the Trust’s outpatient services in the last 18 months to reduce waiting lists.

Since the CQC inspection, in June 2016, a programme has been put in place in order to deal with the flow of patients through the hospital in an effort to reduce some of the capacity pressures. The programme is already underway and aims to deliver a new way for the hospital to operate that will enable the Trust to improve patient flow, reduce bed occupancy and reduce patient delays.

Professor Nancy Fontaine, Chief Nurse and Deputy Chief Executive said: “Patient care is our paramount priority and we see every day on our wards that our staff provide excellent, dedicated service. We recognise we face considerable challenges, not least increasing demand for our services and a hospital that was not built to see the volumes of patients that now annually come through our doors. But this is not an excuse, we will face these challenges head on and we are confident that we have the support of our staff in our continuing efforts for improvement.”