Trust rated ‘Fair’ for quality of services instead of ‘Excellent’ despite meeting almost every national target during 2008/09
The independent health regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), has rated Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust as ‘Fair’ for quality of services and ‘Good’ for use of resources, in its Annual Health Check for 2008-09, published today.
The Annual Health Check rating, published each year in October, measures NHS Trusts’ performance against 44 core standards, 9 national targets and 13 national priorities. Throughout the last year, the Trust has consistently met all 44 of the core standards and is also expected to meet nearly all of the national targets and priorities.
A series of inspections and surveys undertaken in 2008/09 – including inspections by the Healthcare Commission itself (now the CQC) – underline the quality of care received by patients at the Trust’s hospitals:
- Following an unannounced hygiene spot check by Healthcare Commission inspectors in March 2009, North Devon District Hospital was judged to be in the top 10% of hospitals in England for cleanliness
- The Healthcare Commission’s inspection report rated the Trust’s maternity service as one of the best in England
- Following a patient survey, the Trust’s Accident and Emergency department was considered by the Healthcare Commission to be one of the top performing emergency services in England in 2008/09
- In July 2008, patients at North Devon District Hospital gave high ratings for the care they received – placing the Trust in the top 20% of Trusts nationwide.
However, technical problems with transferring the Trust’s evidence data at the end of the year have meant that instead of being rated ‘Excellent’ on its quality of services, the Trust has been rated ‘Fair’. This is a drop from last year’s ‘Good’ rating.
The Trust submitted the data twice, well within the deadline stated by the CQC. As soon as it realised that there were problems with the data transfer, the Trust worked with NHS Information Centre colleagues to establish what had gone wrong and also carried out a local incident review. The Trust subsequently issued a formal appeal to the CQC on the grounds of having had difficulties transferring and uploading the performance data. In September, the CQC declined to accept the appeal.
Jac Kelly, Chief Executive of Northern Devon Healthcare Trust, said: ‘We can categorically prove to anyone who wishes to look that we have met key quality targets. What we cannot alter are the problems experienced in data transfer that meant that we were not able to demonstrate this to the regulator. This is a data transmission issue and does not reflect at all on the actual quality of our services.
‘We are incredibly disappointed that the hard work of our staff has not been reflected in this ‘Fair’ rating. We hope that people can see this result for what it is – a data error, and not representative of the quality of care we provide thousands of patients each week.”
In addition to all the Annual Health Check standards, the Trust is also achieving other NHS standards including:
- In 2008/09, the Trust hit the national 18-week referral-to-treatment waiting time target nine months early.
- In 2009, the Trust is exceeding national targets for secondary preventative measures against heart attacks
- The Trust comfortably met the government’s target for reducing C. Difficile infections in 2008/09
- The new NHS Performance Framework covering April – June 2009 placed the Trust in the top performing category, an achievement supported by patient survey results and by numerous independent assessments’
To view the full CQC report, please go to http://www.cqc.org.uk/
