St Mary’s Hospital in Orford remains requiring improvement

Representatives of the Care Quality Commission called at St Mary's Hospital in June and July to follow up on concerns around patient care.

In a report published today, Friday, the health watchdog determined that management needs to ‘work on having better oversight’ of what is happening across the hospital.

As a result of the inspection, the overall rating for the Floyd Drive site remains as requires improvement.

It is also rated requires improvement for being safe and well led, although it was deemed good for being effective, caring and responsive to people’s needs.

St Mary's, run by Elysium Healthcare, provides specialist care for people with a brain injury and has wards for people with learning disabilities and autism.

There is also a mental health acute ward for adults.

Brian Cranna, CQC’s head of hospital inspection for the north in mental health and community health services, explained the findings of inspectors.

He said: “When we inspected St Mary’s Hospital, we were concerned that there was not enough permanent staff with the right skills and experience to care for patients and give them the specialist support they need.

“However, managers were working hard to improve this by using the same bank and agency staff, who could get to know people and their individual needs as well as help people feel more comfortable by seeing a familiar face.

St Mary’s Hospital in Orford remains requiring improvement (Image: Google Maps)

“Managers need to work on having better oversight of what is happening across the hospital.

“Systems were not effective enough to identify and ensure restrictive practices were kept to a minimum.

“Also, records were not up to date, therefore it was not easy to check if processes had been followed when someone was placed in seclusion.”

Brian said that inspectors looked at incidents which had taken place since the site’s last inspection, which included a death at the service in March which is still under investigation.

However, the CQC was reassured that staff knew what incidents to report and how to report them in line with their policies.

He added: “We were also informed of safeguarding incidents that have taken place. At the time of the inspection there were some safeguarding incidents still being investigated.

“We have fed back our findings to the provider and they know what improvements need to be made.

“We will continue to monitor the hospital closely and return to check on their progress.”

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To improve, the service must ensure that there are always sufficient numbers of suitably experienced staff deployed to meet the needs of people using it.

It must also ensure that the use of blanket restrictions is minimised, and that any restrictions are individualised decisions based on individualised security and clinical considerations.

Moreover, there must be robust governance processes to assess, monitor and improve the quality the services provided.

Following the publication of the report, an Elysium Healthcare spokesman said: “The safety and wellbeing of our patients is our highest priority, and we fully accept the recommendations made by the Care Quality Commission in its latest inspection report.

“Despite the current nationwide healthcare recruitment challenges, the team is working hard to ensure that the hospital employs the very best team members.

“In addition, we have implemented a systems improvement action plan to ensure that we meet the recommendations made by the CQC.

“We were pleased to note that inspectors observed our colleagues being caring in their interactions with patients and treating people with dignity and respect.

“We look forward to evidencing the required improvements to the CQC inspection team on their subsequent visit to the hospital.”