Hospital trust out of special measures

“Significant action” has been made to take the NHS Trust in charge of Boston’s Pilgrim Hospital out of special measures.
Boston Pilgrim Hospital. ENGEMN00120130924102319Boston Pilgrim Hospital. ENGEMN00120130924102319
Boston Pilgrim Hospital. ENGEMN00120130924102319

United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust been in special measures since 2013, following an inspection over concerns about mortality rates and standards of care.

A Care Quality Commission (CQC) re-inspection last month found a “substantial” number of improvements had been made since an inspection last year.

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Jane Lewington, Trust chief executive, said: “I am always so proud of our staff’s dedication and commitment to delivering compassionate and high quality care, but today I am beyond proud.

“Although the Trust’s overall rating of “requires improvement” remains the same, the detail behind this is very different from last year – 83 per cent of our ratings are now “good” or “outstanding” – 47 per cent more than last year.

“Coming out of special measures is a very significant achievement for us but our real goal is to ensure that we continuously strive to deliver the very best care for all our patients .

“Our priorities are now to continue to recruit more nurses, doctors and clinical staff into post, to fundamentally review our patient appointment systems and to complete the work on improving the hospital environment.

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According to the report patients are cared for by “supportive, caring and informative nursing and medical staff”.

Areas which had been improved since the inspection in October last year include:

l A&E departments now more responsive to patients and families.

l Better signage for patients whose first language isn’t English.

l Condition of medical records.

l Good progress on infection control.

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l Availability of equipment to improve the safety of services

l Medicines management and fewer prescribing errors

l Increased staffing to help seven day working

However, the CQC team highlighted areas where further improvements are needed. These are around recruiting more staff in some services, managing and monitoring systems at the County Hospital, Louth, and the need to review trust-wide systems for patient appointments.