From today, we are no longer in special measures for quality
Pat yourself on the back. Give yourselves a round of applause. Raise a cheer from the team. From today, we are no longer in special measures for quality.
This is a tremendous achievement by all of you, and a milestone in our improvement journey towards becoming an outstanding healthcare organisation. Well done, everyone! Team Barts Health can hold its head high with pride.
After four years in special measures, we have lifted ourselves out of the regulatory regime of strict compliance, close scrutiny and careful support. Our oversight body, NHS Improvement, has accepted a recommendation from the Care Quality Commission following its report into the inspections of the Royal London, Whipps Cross and Newham hospitals last autumn.
I am delighted to tell you that the report to be published tomorrow rates us as “good” in three of the five domains that matter to the CQC – being Caring, Effective, and Well-Led. Taking account of the earlier inspection at St Bartholomew’s, this means that two-thirds of all our hospital services are now rated good or better. It is a tribute to your commitment to continually improving our services for patients that the number of areas rated as good have doubled since the previous CQC inspections.
In 2018 the inspectors found improvements across the board, and especially in leadership, governance and culture. You told them you saw visible and engaging leaders at service and hospital level. You told them you had experienced an improved organisational culture. And they themselves observed better oversight of the quality of care, significant investment in IT, and improved data quality.
The CQC also singled out more than 35 areas of outstanding practice, including our specialist dental and children’s hospitals. The dental hospital team at the Royal London deserve a particular mention for the way they have overcome challenges to be rated good (and outstanding for effective, caring and well-led). We are proud of them.
Among other local success stories, I would like to congratulate emergency care, surgery and children’s teams at the Royal London for achieving a good rating. Likewise, step forward the teams providing good services for children and young people at Newham, and good medical care and good critical care at Whipps Cross. Well done, all of you.
Amid all these heartwarming stories there are also some lessons to learn. We have already taken steps to address concerns in maternity care at Newham, and the CQC acknowledged those improvements (even while formally recording an inadequate service at the time of inspection). We must also take steps, for example, to improve our investigation of serious incidents and our response to patient complaints.
As a Trust, we will not shirk from these and other challenges. They are part of the day job of running what must be (with our record emergency attendances) the busiest group of hospitals in the NHS.
The important thing is that coming out of special measures is a vote of confidence in us all to do what is necessary. It means the regulators trust us to get on with the job, and believe that we have the ability and commitment to sustain the improvements you have all been making.
As you may know, we recently partnered with the internationally-renowned Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Their experts will be helping us over the coming months to further develop our own WeImprove approach to quality improvement. I hope to be able to share the first fruits of our collaboration shortly and invite our staff to take part in the next phase of our exciting improvement journey.
We have come a long way together, and there is still much to do. Yet today we can pause briefly and celebrate how our efforts to provide safe and compassionate care at all times are recognised by the wider NHS. Thank you all so much for your continuing commitment and dedication to do the best by our staff, our patients and our communities.
Alwen Williams, Chief Executive