Our maternity services have recently received an updated rating from the Care Quality Commission (CQC). You can read the full report for each hospital below:
Although the CQC report highlighted several areas of good practice across our maternity services, we were naturally disappointed with the overall rating.
We have confidence in our ability to improve maternity services for women and their families and have embarked on a focused programme of improvements.
The inspection took place in March. Since then, improvements have included:
- reducing waiting times in triage
- investing in staff to increase the number of operating lists available
- providing additional staff in key areas of the service
- increasing numbers of senior doctors available during peak times
- launching a wide-reaching recruitment campaign.
In line with NHS England’s three year ‘Maternity and neonatal improvement plan’, we are committed to continuously improving our services, not only meeting the expectations of those who use our services but exceeding them.
Maternity Voices Partnership
Our improvement plan was developed and has been delivered with the support of stakeholders including the Maternity Voices Partnership, who said:
“As Maternity Voice Partnership leads, we have been impressed with the immediacy and seriousness with which senior leaders at the trust have responded to CQC’s inspection findings.
“From the outset the MVP have been involved in both the oversight and delivery groups set up by the trust to ensure changes leading to improvements in care have been actioned. We have seen staff working incredibly hard over the last few months as evidenced during our June visit to triage to “Walk the Patch.” The feedback we received from women using services at that time was heartening, demonstrating many improvements had already been achieved.
“The MVP continues to work with the trust to drive continuous improvement of personalised and safe maternity care and to ensure services are co-produced with the people who use them.”