Peterborough City Hospital quality rating falls

In a new Care Quality Commission (CQC) report published on Friday 20 December, eight of the hospital’s core services were reviewed as part of an inspection of North West Anglia Foundation Trust (NWAFT).

The CQC – the independent regulator of all health and social care services in England – published its 87-page report on NWAFT on Friday, 20 December.

NWAFT also runs Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdon and Stamford and Rutland Hospital.

All services are rated on how safe, effective, caring, responsive to people’s needs, and well-led they are.

Overall, NWAFT received a rating of “requires improvement”. This combines the scores for all three hospitals it manages.

At Peterborough City Hospital, surgery, services for children and young people, end of life care, outpatients and diagnostic imaging were all rated “good” overall.

However, urgent and emergency services, critical care and maternity all require improvement, say inspectors. And quality of leadership in maternity and critical care was rated “inadequate”.

The CQC has issued six requirement notices to the trust. This means the trust must send a report saying what action it is taking to meet these requirements.

These relate to breaches of legal requirements in the trust overall, urgent and emergency care, critical care, maternity and end of life care at Peterborough City Hospital, and urgent and emergency care at Stamford and Rutland Hospital.

Requirement notices issued

The CQC has issued six requirement notices to the trust. This means the trust must send a report saying what action it is taking to meet these requirements.

These relate to breaches of legal requirements in the trust overall, urgent and emergency care, critical care, maternity and end of life care at Peterborough City Hospital, and urgent and emergency care at Stamford and Rutland Hospital. 
However, there were also some areas of outstanding practice at Peterborough and Stamford and Rutland Hospitals.

However, there were also some areas of outstanding practice – including diagnostic imaging and urgent and children’s emergency care at Peterborough.

In a statement, following the report’s publication, NWAFT Chief Executive Caroline Walker and Chief Nurse Jo Bennis said the outcome was disappointing but was a good source of information to progress its continuous improvement.

“Our staff continue to work incredibly hard under a huge amount of pressure to maintain a high standard of care for our patients and this is reflected in the areas rated as ‘Good’ and ‘Outstanding’ and is something that we should celebrate.

"We will also continue to stage our own internal quality assessments as part of our ongoing commitment to quality of care and wish to congratulate all of those areas who have achieved an ‘outstanding’ rating as a result of this internal initiative.

“We would like to reassure and assure our patients that we are committed to continuing to focus on the areas that need further support and have already taken action on the areas where concerns have been raised.”

Read the CQC report