22.01.20
GOSH earns Good rating following CQC inspection
Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust (GOSH) has been given a rating of Good by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) following an inspection.
This means the trust’s overall rating is unchanged from its last inspection.
The trust was rated Outstanding for being effective and caring, and Good for being responsive and well-led. For being safe, one of the CQC inspection criteria, GOSH was rated as Requires Improvement.
The inspection took place in October and November 2019, with the results only now being published by CQC.
CQC carried out the unannounced core service inspection in early October 2019. CQC inspected the core services of critical care, surgery and child and adolescent mental health services. CQC inspected how well-led the trust was in November 2019.
During the inspection, CQC found numerous areas of Outstanding practice. GOSH had recently started using pioneering 3D heart modelling and virtual reality to support complex cardiac surgery.
Use of a virtual reality model of a patient’s heart has been shown to assist clinicians to virtually plan and practice complex procedures ahead of surgery, reducing the risk of complications and improving outcomes.
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In collaboration with a local acute NHS trust and university, the surgeons also successfully performed specialist foetal surgery, on a baby with spina bifida. This was the first time this surgery had been performed in the UK.
The drop in rating from Good for being safe was due to inspectors feeling some services did not always control infection risk well, systems to ensure equipment was well maintained in some clinical areas was not effective and pharmacy provision on the critical care wards were below recommended levels by the Society of Critical Care Medicine.
Professor Ted Baker, England’s chief inspector of hospitals, said: “Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust, has a worldwide reputation for the work it does caring for sick children.
“While I am please it has retained its Good overall rating, the trust needs to put more effort to improving the consistency of its management of patient safety.
“That said I was impressed with some of the Outstanding care inspectors witnessed. Critical care staff were lead authors on four of the eight multiple centre trials published globally in paediatric intensive care in 2018 and 2019. They were the largest global contributor from any the paediatric intensive care units.”
The full report can be read on CQC’s website here: https://www.cqc.org.uk/provider/RP4