CQC action update

Last year, we welcomed the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in to inspect GOSH’s services. They focussed their attention on our critical care, surgical and mental health services. They also reviewed whether the organisation is well led.  The CQC rated the hospital as ‘Good’ overall with all of our services being scored as either Good or Outstanding.

We were rated 'Outstanding' for the effectiveness of our services and the caring way in which they are delivered. We were really pleased that the CQC recognised the improvements we have made in Well-led by rating us as ‘Good’.  We were also rated ‘Good’ for being responsive to the needs of our patients. Whilst the inspection showcased many areas of outstanding practice across the hospital, it also highlighted a number of recommendations and improvements to be made particularly in relation to the consistency of our safety practices.

Matthew Shaw, Chief Executive of Great Ormond Street Hospital says: “We were really pleased to be rated as ‘Good’ overall and particularly to see that we are now rated as either ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’ in every single clinical service at the hospital. However, the inspection showed there was still room for improvement. While inspectors highlighted some good safety practice, our rating in this area had gone down to 'Requires Improvement'. This is because they found inconsistent processes in some clinical areas around the way in which we store our medication, how we control infection risk and how we ensure that our equipment is safe to use. They also highlighted that there was more to be done to support the roll out of the Electronic Patient Record system in our Mental Health services.”

We want to be open and transparent about the changes being made to improve the services we provide our patients, so that all our patients and families feel confident in the care that we provide.  We wanted to share some of the work we have already done to respond to the feedback received from this latest inspection. This is part of our continual process of improvement to ensure GOSH provides the best possible care for our patients and their families.

Following the inspection, we have already made the following changes to our services:

• We have addressed concerns about the access control to our medication rooms in critical care.
• We have taken immediate steps to tackle issues with the storage of IV fluids highlighted to us during the inspection, and we are implementing systemic checking processes to make sure we are regularly checking all fluids are stored safely and appropriately.
• We have also reviewed our frameworks for identifying medicine management risks to make sure we are being responsive to all risks as they come up.
• We have set up a collaborative working group involving our Mental Health Team and the Electronic Patient Record Team to work through the changes that need to be made to the system to make it work most effectively for our patients and staff. The team expect to have completed all priority actions by March 2020. 
• We have launched a new People Strategy which looks at how we can make GOSH the best possible work environment for our staff. One of the key priorities in this strategy is that equality, diversity and inclusion underpins all our people practices. To complement this, we are soon to roll out a Diversity and Inclusion Strategy which will look at how staff from diverse backgrounds have equal opportunities to develop and ensure all of our staff feel valued and respected.
• We have carried out listening events for staff to help raise awareness of the safe and respectful behaviour policy and improve access to conflict resolution training at the Trust

Our Executive Team meet every month to review the progress that we are making to address the concerns raised, and to ensure that we are always improving the care which we provide to our patients.

For more information, access the CQC’s full report and summary report on the CQC’s website.

Please find our previous update on GOSH’s 2019/2020 CQC inspection here.