HOSPITAL chiefs have said standards will improve in future in the wake of a critical watchdog report.
Pennine Acute Hospitals Trust chief executive Sir David Dalton spoke after the Care Quality Commission (CQC) rated the trust as 'inadequate' in a report out today.
Sir David, who took over in April, said the trust was more determined than ever to drive up improvements so that it becomes one of the best and safest trusts in the country.
You can read four other articles about the inspection in separate news stories elsewhere on this website.
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Having come from Salford Royal Hospital, which has an 'outstanding CQC rating, Sir David added that he was determined to apply his track record of patient safety, high quality of care and high staff satisfaction to drive the necessary improvements.
Under his leadership, the trust has put in place a comprehensive action plan to deliver improvements.
An extra £9.2 million has been put aside to spend on staffing and service improvements.
In addition to Sir David Dalton’s arrival, in March a newly appointed medical director, Professor Matthew Makin, started in post days after the CQC inspection.
Then in August, Elaine Inglesby-Burke CBE was appointed as the trust's chief nurse.
Sir David said: "The CQC report doesn’t make comfortable reading and while staff will be very disappointed with the trust’s overall rating, we welcome this report, which I believe is a fair assessment of the issues facing the trust.
"Encouragingly, CQC inspectors found that the trust was a caring organisation and found staff treating patients in a compassionate, caring and sensitive way.
“The CQC report is holding up a mirror to the organisation and reflects very much what staff have been saying for some time on issues related to staffing pressures, inadequate systems, culture, leadership and resources.
“We know improvements must be made not only in the short term to stabilise pressured services, but in the longer term to ensure services are sustainable.
"We want all services to meet the high standards that our patients expect and deserve.
“We have not waited for the publication of this report to put an improvement plan in place to support staff and patients.
"Our priority is to keep our services running safely and to ensure patients receive good safe treatment in a timely manner.
"We will not allow this organisation to run unsafe services.
"It is recognised that, for this trust to make services safer and more reliable, it requires the support from our health and social care partners to provide over the next six months and to consider longer-term solutions for services across Greater Manchester.
“The trust needs stability in its services and its leadership.
"This week will be the start of a new journey and a new focus for staff here.
"The trust and the 9,000 staff who work across the four hospitals and our community services will be stronger, better and more determined than ever to drive improvements as a consequence of the publication of this report."
Prof Makin said: "As one of the largest trusts in the country, last year our staff saw over 320,500 A&E cases, 670,000 outpatients, 106,000 inpatients and 73,200 day cases across our four hospitals.
"In addition, our community staff made over 146,000 visits to patients in their own homes and our maternity teams helped women deliver 9,700 babies.
"The majority of these patients received excellent care and a good patient experience from committed staff.
"But we know we have to do more to ensure patients and their families receive safe and effective care much more reliably.
“Wwe have taken immediate actions to strengthen the leadership and staffing arrangements across a number of our services, particularly those that are pressured and fragile.”
An improvement board has been set up to address the issues raised by the report.
Work is already underway to ensure maternity services are safe and sustainable by recruiting 33 midwives and 25 healthcare support workers to enhance its midwifery staffing establishment, which includes over 350 midwives.
Lord Peter Smith, Chair of Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Strategic Partnership Board - the body overseeing the region's devolved health and social care system - said: "Devolution has given us the opportunity to work together - and support each other - in instances like this, so that we can collectively raise standards or tackle key issues across the whole area.
"Problems must not be viewed as individual area issues - they need to be addressed by Greater Manchester and other parts of the wider region.
"We now have senior clinicians from across the region meeting regularly to advise - and act on - how the whole Greater Manchester structure and its expert workforce can be best used to help each other.
"This is not only in times of crisis, but as the start of that transformational process of making the entire system more robust and sustainable."
Visit cqc.org.uk/provider/RW6 to read the full report.
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