25.06.14
Monitor takes action at one of England’s worst A&E departments
Health sector regulator Monitor says failures at Southend University Hospital NHS FT’s on A&E waiting times and in missing the 18-week referral to treatment target is “indicative of wider problems with the way the trust is led”.
It says the A&E department in particular is “one of the worst performing in the country”, and is stepping in – requiring the trust to implement a new “credible” plan to improve A&E and another to improve referral-to-treatment times. It also wants new measures to improve its clinical and management teams.
The regulator said: “Monitor believes continuing to keep patients waiting too long for both emergency treatment and routine operations is. We are also concerned about the stability of its executive team, which has had a very high turnover of members in the last two years.”
The trust must now review the effectiveness of its own board.
Adam Cayley, regional director at Monitor said: “This trust has had one of the worst performing A&E departments in the country. It has also failed to see other patients who have been referred for treatment quickly enough.
“It is unacceptable that patients have to wait. Monitor will not hesitate to step in and make changes to the leadership if the trust does not improve its services for its patients.”
Trust chairman Alan Tobias said: "We believe we are now in a much stronger position to tackle these issues and will be working hard to achieve all the undertakings and requirements we have set out with our regulator.
"I am under no illusion and want to assure our local community we must and will get this right because it is in the best interests of our patients, which is what drives the board and the trust. Whilst our recent CQC inspection had no concern around the quality of care we provide our patients, we recognise that not meeting key performance targets means some of our patients are waiting longer that we would like and we have shown we are dedicated to changing that.
"After inconsistent achievement of the A&E target, there is now some good news on our performance in this area. We are reducing waiting and delays, seeing patients in more appropriate settings, and enabling people to go home more promptly as soon as they are fit enough to leave hospital. We want to maintain this progress and will work with Monitor to assure them of this.
"On board governance, we recognised that the number of interim appointments we had in key executive positions plus a retirement did not promote board stability. However since the start of the year we have made permanent appointments to the roles of chief operating officer, director of finance and are currently recruiting a director of estates, while two new independent non-executive directors joined us in the summer.''
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