Wakefield’s Pinderfields and Dewsbury and District hospitals told to improve by CQC inspectors

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) said Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield and Dewsbury and District Hospital had issues with how quickly risk was assessed, numbers of staff to keep people safe, mental health provision, and communication with people who do not speak English.

Both hospitals remained rated at “requires improvement” overall and in the rating categories of being safe and responsive.

Caring remained at “good” for both sites, while the rating for effective has improved to “good” at Pinderfields and remains “good” at Dewsbury.

Both sites have stepped-up from “requires improvement” to “good” in the category to determine if the service is well-led.

Sheila Grant, CQC deputy director of operations in the north, said: “It was encouraging to find there were some improvements particularly in the emergency departments and medical care, including older people's care, however, further work was needed.

“The emergency departments planned care to meet the needs of local people. However, if a person didn’t have English as a first language it wasn’t always easy to give feedback on care.

"Additional languages were available through a displayed internet link, but the displayed information was only in English.

"This made the assumption that all people would be able to access the technology required and this impeded both departments from being allowed to improve through feedback.

“At both hospitals, some people left the department before undertaking their treatment. However, senior leaders reviewed this information and would call the person to follow up on their condition the following day and if it was needed ask them to come back to the department.

“At previous inspections we highlighted a need for improvements in sepsis management and infection prevention.

"The pace of improvement around both of these areas gave us enough assurances that the service had improved their management of risks to ensure people were being kept safe.

“We reported our findings to the trust who know what they must do to ensure further improvements are forthcoming.

"We will continue to monitor the trust closely and will return to carry out another inspection to ensure any further improvements are sustained and embedded.”

Medical care, including older people's care, was also inspected at both sites.

In both hospitals’ urgent and emergency services departments inspectors found that peoples risk wasn’t always assessed by staff in a timely manner and facilities for people with mental ill health didn’t meet national standards.

They also found people could access the service but would have to wait for assessment and treatment.

In medical care there weren’t always enough staff on duty to keep people safe.

People were sometimes at risk of deterioration because staff didn’t always respond quickly enough.

The service didn’t always control infection risk well and the environment didn’t always meet the needs of people.

Staff didn’t always manage medicines well and the service didn’t always ensure that people made decisions based on all the information available.

People’s communication requirements weren’t always taken into account and improvement actions weren’t always delivered in a timely way.

Risk wasn’t always managed well by leaders.

However, inspectors also found in urgent and emergency services people were treated with compassion and kindness.

Staff respected their privacy and dignity and took account of their individual needs.

There were enough staff to care for people and keep them safe, while safety incidents were managed well and lessons were learned from them to ensure people were kept safe.

In medical care, staff know how to protect people from abuse and people had enough to eat and drink and were given pain relief when they needed it.

Emotional support to people, families, and carers by staff was good and people were treated with compassion and kindness.

Talib Yaseen, Chief Nursing Officer at Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust, said: “Whilst our overall rating as a trust remains at “requires improvement” we are pleased with the progress we have made less than a year following the previous CQC inspection report.

“What this overall result doesn’t show is that we have improved to good for the domains of both “well led” and “effective” in our urgent and emergency care (UEC) at Pinderfields, as well as improving to good in the domain of ‘responsive’ for medical care at Pinderfields. It is also really heartening that we have improved to good for “well led" in UEC at Dewsbury.

“This is testament to how hard the teams have been working to improve the quality of our UEC services which has been achieved against a backdrop of increased attendances and acuity and challenges relating to flow and four hour performance.

"Issues which have been seen across the UK as highlighted by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM).

“We remain committed to the continuous journey of improvement we are on and are embracing the recently launched RCEM vision of “excellence in emergency care”.

“One of the comments from the report that I did want to highlight was how staff treated patients with compassion and kindness, and good emotional support was provided to loved ones.

"I’m proud that we are recognised for treating our patients and their loved ones with kindness and compassion and I want to thank everyone for everything they do to care for our patients every day.

"Although we still have further improvements to make we have achieved a great deal in a short space of time.”