Scarborough Hospital 'requires improvement'

Staff shortages remains a concern throughout the hospital as a recent inspection has revealed it ‘requires improvement’.

The rating comes from the Care Quality Commission following an inspection of York Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

It highlighted the emergency department’s failure to meet the majority of national standards relating to Accident and Emergency performance.

These include targets in four-hour waits, re-attendance rates, time from decision to admit to admission, median time to treatment and ambulance handover times. Recent information, however, does show this was improving.

The trust was also told it must take action to ensure that clinical records are regularly checked to ensure they contain essential patient information including safeguarding risk assessments as well as treatment and care received.

This is after the inspection found records were not “consistent or robust”.

In the medical care services, which consists of nine wards and units with 181 beds, the inspection found that there continued to be “insufficient numbers of suitably skilled, qualified and experienced registered nurses”. While the department relied on staff goodwill, bank and agency workers and ward managers relinquishing managerial shifts to support clinical work.

Ellen Armistead, deputy chief inspector of hospitals said: “Although inspectors found improvement across some services provided at York Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, the trust still remains rated as Requires Improvement overall.

“It is disappointing that there hasn’t been more widespread progress made in the areas where we told the trust they must improve at their comprehensive inspection in 2015.

“The trust is however looking to the future, and has implemented new ways of working at The York Hospital and Scarborough Hospital.

“The new models in critical care and urgent and emergency services have been implemented to alleviate some of the recruitment issues as well as increased demand.”

Of 39 ratings across eight departments, 20 were found to require improvements with only the service for children and young people, and end of life care being rated ‘good’ overall.

Patrick Crowley, Chief Executive, said: “It is also encouraging to see the many positive findings noted in the CQC’s reports for Scarborough and Bridlington Hospitals, particularly as our hospitals on the East Coast continue to face well-documented pressures, specifically the recruitment of medical and nursing staff.

“At a time of national attention on emergency services it is great to see improved ratings for both of our Emergency Departments, particularly as during the inspection both departments were seeing a sustained increase in the number of acutely ill patients requiring care.

“Once again our services are rated as Good across the board for being caring, and it is a testament to all of our staff that they continue to put patients first, despite the significant pressures they face.”