Staff at Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust have a huge commitment to safety and quality and show care and compassion is alive and well in the NHS according to an independent report into their services.
The report published by the Chief Inspector of Hospitals followed an inspection in May by a large team from the Care Quality Commission including doctors, nurses and senior NHS managers into standards at the Trust.
Thanks to the hard work of its staff, the Trust, which runs East Surrey Hospital, achieved a ‘Good’ rating across the board. This puts the Trust amongst the best in the country for the quality of services and the CQC said staff should be extremely proud of what they have achieved.
Chief Executive of SASH, Michael Wilson said: “I am very proud of our staff – this is their story and I’m glad their talent, hard work and dedication has been recognised. This report also makes for reassuring reading for the community we serve and shows our commitment to safety and quality.
“The inspectors said our staff were the most engaged out of all of the Trusts they had visited and I know this makes a real difference to patient experience and care. They also said they would be very proud to work here and would want their family and friends to be cared for here which is a wonderful endorsement of everyone’s efforts.”
The CQC inspection focused on five key questions about the healthcare services provided by the Trust: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people’s needs and well led. SASH achieved a ‘Good’ rating across the board in all five areas.
To put this in the national context, to date of the most recent (31) inspections only four other trusts achieved an overall ‘Good’ rating and only two of these achieved a sea of green in all domains – which is what SASH has achieved.
The report highlighted several areas of outstanding and good practise, including:
- End of life Care achieved an ‘Outstanding’ in the responsiveness category.
- The excellent care and facilities on the midwife-led birthing unit and the neonatal intensive care unit.
- The pre-assessment clinic at Crawley Hospital, which has been extended in the evening in response to feedback and local demand.
- Staff focus groups – best attended – more staff than they’d seen in any other trust
- Clear ambition across the Trust to be the best – from catering staff through to the Chair
- Staff willingness to go the extra mile and work together to meet individual pastoral needs.
- Strong desire to be clinically led
- Large number of specialist nurses – strong focus on learning and development
The report recommended some areas where improvements could be made – the majority of which were in Outpatients. These included a need to ensure adequate capacity to meet demand and improvements to the quality of service including waiting times and cancellations.
The Trust has already started to address these. The department has been redecorated and improvements have been made to seating and signage. Work is also underway with the reception staff on customer care training.
Surrey & Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust has consistently been rated as a Low Risk trust by the CQC using their intelligent monitoring. For the last 3 consecutive quarters (since it was introduced in Oct 2013) we have been rated band 6 – the lowest risk in the country.
