George Eliot Hospital "requires improvement" say government health inspectors

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The Care Quality Commission said standards had slipped following an overall "good" rating in 2014



Standards must improve at Nuneaton’s George Eliot Hospital, say health inspectors.

That's the finding of the Care Quality Commission following an inspection of the site in October last year.

The NHS trust which runs the hospital was rated overall as "requires improvement", with major concerns about urgent and emergency care, and end-of-life services.

In fact inspectors said standards had slipped following an overall "good" rating in 2014.

Professor Ted Baker, the CQC’s Chief Inspector of hospitals, highlighted end-of-life-care and urgent and emergency care, two hugely important areas of the hospital, as in need of urgent attention.

"Our inspectors were disappointed that several ratings at George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust had declined since we last inspected,” he said.

“Our main concerns were with what we found in the urgent and emergency care, which we rated as requires improvement overall, and end of life services which we rated Inadequate overall.”

Among the areas in need of desperate action include getting more suitably qualified and skilled staff in end-of-life care, as well as training for hospital staff.

In emergency care it was highlighted that senior leaders were not aware of the risk to patients in the department, there were no deciated triage nurses in post, not all staff had been trained to triage patients and leaders were ‘not leading effectively’ and were not visible due to demand elsewhere in the hospital.

It is not secret that the hospital has struggling with a horrendous back log in people waiting for care, which at one point saw almost 13,000 patients waiting for Referral to Treatment (RTT).

This was noted by the QCQ which said that hospital must meet its RTT in order to make improvements.

Back in 2014, CQC inspectors lifted the hospital out of special measures, which was enforced by the government, by giving it a ‘good’ overall rating and the hospital had been working towards at least maintaining that rating.

But now the focus will be back on making the improvements set-out by the CQC in the latest report.

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Patients rank food, privacy and dignity below national standard at Nuneaton hospital



Unhappy patients have ranked food, privacy and dignity at Nuneaton’s hospital way below the national standard.

In fact, all eight areas of the George Eliot Hospital assessed fell under what is expected across the country.

But the worst performing were food, ward food, organisation food, and privacy, dignity and wellbeing.

Members of the Eliot's trust board picked over the results of the annual Patient Led Assessment of Care Environment (PLACE) assessments at a meeting on Tuesday.

It was explained that while below the national average, cleanliness, condition appearance and maintenance, and dementia had improved compared to 2017 results.

But food proved to be a huge issue, from availability, provision of out of hours food for staff or relatives and lack of dining rooms.

"One of the main issues experienced during this year's audit was around the lack of preparedness before the mealtime commenced and in particular protected mealtimes were not observed in a number of areas," board members were told.

"Part of the Trust's strategy to address this issue is to employ ward housekeepers who, as part of their remit, is to co-ordinate the meal service and enhance the patient mealtime experience."

Another area of concern was privacy and dignity, which was recognised to have fallen below last year's figures and centred around the lack of single rooms with en-suite facilities across the hospital.

Inconsistency in patient access to televisions, radios and lockable bed lockers were also flagged up as key areas that need to be improved.

Disability adaptations also scored low and Kirstie Webb, head of estates and facilities at the hospital, told the board members they have asked for funding to make some of the improvements, such as new patient lockers, new patient overhead tables, new handrails and painting doors different colours to be dementia friendly.

Some concerns raised about access around some of the wards are down to the layout of the building but Glen Burley, chief executive, concluded that they could make some improvements, saying: "Things can be done, especially about food and timing."

"Some of the things are in our gift to do," added Catherine Free, medical director.

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Nuneaton's hospital needs to save £2.5m in just two months

Nuneaton’s hospital has to find £2.5m in just two months to help meet its agreed level of debt.

The George Eliot Hospital faces a huge challenge as it aims to make the savings before the end of the financial year.

Each hospital agrees a level of debt, known as a controlled total, but the ‘Eliot is not on course to meet the £18.5 m deficit before April – in fact it is £2.5m off the mark.

It means, worst case scenario, the hospital could end up £21m in debt by April.

Haq Khan, director of finance at 'Eliot, explained that the serious was far worse, they were £4.5m off the target but managed to 'pull some back'.

"We have had some discussions with NHSI (NHS Improvement) and also at board in terms of how significant a challenge it is and how we can pull that back," he said.

"At that moment we need to strive to get back on plan and pull out all of the stops to be able to do that, it is going to be a significant challenge but with two months to go between now and the end of the financial year, we will continue to work towards getting back on track."

Anyone else seeing a pattern here?