04.03.19
Inspectors find governance issues and slow pace of change at Leicestershire trust in ‘disappointing’ CQC report
Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust (LPT) has been issued with a warning notice and told it must improve by the CQC after inspectors found issues with its oversight of patient safety and with the trust’s governance.
The CQC said the trust had failed to address a number of concerns raised in previous inspections, and said the overall pace of change and converting plans into action across the trust was “disappointingly slow.”
Inspectors said the trust lacked an overarching strategy and staff did not seem to understand how their plans and objectives connected with the trust’s overall vision for the service.
The deputy chief inspector for hospitals, Paul Lelliott, stated: “We found significant deficiencies in governance at the trust-level and the trust risk register did not clearly document action taken to address the risks that had been identified.”
LPT remains ‘requires improvement’, with improvements found in the trust’s mental health services for elderly people, but an ‘inadequate’ rating was given for its acute adult mental health wards.
Lelliot said: “The trust must improve its oversight of ward environments and of the safety of patients cared for in these settings.
“Despite the CQC having raised concerns in 2017, the trust has still not taken the action necessary to ensure that these wards are safe, clean well equipped, well maintained and fit for purpose. We found concerns with the environment in all five core services that we inspected.”
The trust said the report was a “disappointing but fair judgement of the pace of improvement.”
“The safety of our patients is paramount and we have already begun to increase pace and take urgent action to implement the improvements the CQC has identified,” the statement noted.
Peter Miller, chief executive of LPT, commented: “The CQC report shows that we still have work to do to get the fundamentals right, first time, every time, and that we need to increase the pace of improvement.
“I am sorry that some of the care that we have provided has not been of the standard that we would all want.”
The trust must now make a number of improvements to its risk assessment, staff’s application of the Mental Health Act Code of Practice and government guidance, and must ensure there is effective leadership and review its recruitment process.
The CQC will carry out further inspections to assess the progress made.