Hit and miss success for NHS in West Midlands
Disappointing results in the annual performance ratings have highlighted persistent problems in the region’s NHS services. Health Correspondent Alison Dayani looks at the issues
This year’s Care Quality Commission ratings make grim reading for patients across the West Midlands.
Despite 70 per cent of hospitals, primary care trusts and other services scoring extremely well where the balance books are concerned, the actual quality patients receive on the wards is a very different story.
Only three trusts achieved the ultimate rating of ‘excellent’ for both quality of services and financial management – The Royal Orthopaedic Foundation Hospital, in Northfield; University Hospitals Birmingham Foundation Trust and Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust.
But the fact quality of services results saw only six trusts rated ‘excellent’, 13 good but 25 ‘fair’ or ‘weak’, while finance gradings had nine trusts as ‘excellent’, 23 ‘good’, 12 ‘fair’ and none as ‘weak’, has raised concern over the obvious imbalance.
Andrea Gordon, regional director for the Care Quality Commission, said: “Care and finances go hand in hand. If a trust is performing weakly but getting an excellent rating for financial management you have to question what is going on and we will look at that. There is some good news but overall results in the West Midlands are disappointing. There are too few positive results across the board.”
The number of hospitals scoring the lowest, below-par rating of weak for quality of care has been rising in recent years. Four years ago, there were no weak hospitals recorded in the West Midlands while 40 per cent of them had weak finances. This position has been reversed with 11 per cent of hospitals recording the worst grading for quality but none rated as weak for financial management this year.
Ms Gordon has particular concerns for the region, ranging from stroke care and cancelled operations to bed-blocking, lack of dental services and teenage pregnancy rates.
Fifteen out of 17 primary care trusts (PCTs) failed to see patients within 13 weeks for an outpatient appointment while 12 out of 17 failed to get enough patients seen by an NHS dentist.
Hospitals are being closely watched over stroke care with ten out of 15 trusts failing to get a patient into a specialist unit, ten of 19 trusts failing to get patients operated on within 28 days after a cancelled operation and half of A&Es in the region failing to see enough patients within the four-hour target.
But Ms Gordon said NHS managers had good reason to face these issues as the stakes were even higher for failure from April.
“I am concerned at the performance of the trusts which have been rated weak or fair; for their quality of services,” she said. “The onus is on their managers to address their weak areas before the Government’s new registration system is introduced.
“Time is now running out. In the New Year, all trusts will be required by law to register with the Care Quality Commission. If they don’t meet standards, the Commission will have new important powers to fine NHS trusts, suspend services or even, in the most serious cases, remove their registration.
“It would be a really last resort but if we thought maternity services at a hospital were not safe we could close that department. In the case of Stafford Hospital, we could have perhaps suspended use of its A&E and made patients go to other hospitals. Perish the thought we will have to do that, as it puts pressure on other trusts, but we are here to protect patient safety and if something is failing or deemed unsafe we will have to act.”
