GOSH receives ‘good’ inspection rating from hospital regulator

Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust (GOSH) has been rated as ‘good’ overall while the ‘caring’ element of the Trust’s services have been recognised as ‘outstanding’ by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the independent regulator of health and social care in England.

The overall ‘good’ rating follows visits by the CQC in April and May 2015 as part of the regulator’s rolling schedule of inspections.

Other areas of GOSH that the inspectors were particularly impressed with included:

• Patient and parent involvement. The Trust was praised for keeping parents and children fully involved in their treatment, including decision making wherever possible.
• Degree of compassion and respect demonstrated by staff. Examples of staff being compassionate and treating patients and their families with the highest levels of dignity and respect were seen throughout the inspection.
• Commitment to continually improve the quality of care and innovate. The team noted many incidences of staff working together in the pursuit of excellent care and developing innovative treatments.
• An open and transparent culture. Good examples of duty of candour were noted, with praise for staff being very open when things had gone wrong. This approach was seen with parents and patients when apologies and support were offered. It was also seen corporately through the reporting and investigation of incidents.
• The refurbished or rebuilt facilities. These were seen as modern, extremely child friendly and conducive to excellent patient care.

In addition to highlighting areas of ‘outstanding’ practice, the CQC’s report also details areas for improvement in order for GOSH to meet the highest standards, including a need for better record keeping and administration processes, and ensuring there are clearer arrangements for reporting transitional care service performance.

All recommendations will be addressed by the Trust through a comprehensive action plan.

Peter Steer, Chief Executive of GOSH, said: “We are very pleased to have been rated ‘good’ by the Care Quality Commission’s inspection team after their thorough assessment of the Trust, and that they have highlighted so many areas of outstanding practice. We are particularly pleased that the inspection team identified the ‘caring’ element of our services as ‘outstanding’ across the board; this is testament to the hard work and dedication of our staff.

“However, we are not complacent and we know there is always more we can do to improve the services we provide for our patients. The report noted our open and transparent culture and we were proactive in highlighting to the CQC the areas we know require improvement.

“One such area is around our record keeping and administration processes. We are disappointed that our administration processes have not matched the high standards of clinical care that we provide. Since the time of the inspections in April and May 2015 we have taken decisive action to address the issues identified and work is now well under way to ensure our processes for managing data correctly are as robust as possible going forward.

“We will continue this important piece of work and we will also ensure that we take action to address all other areas for improvement identified in the report.”

The CQC’s Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Professor Sir Mike Richards, said: “During our inspection, we saw a culture of providing excellent care with compassion and commitment from all staff throughout GOSH, which was fully appreciated by patients, their families and carers. The children and young people we met were extremely positive about the treatment they received and parents told us they were very happy with the standards of care provided by trust staff.”

Full reports for the inspection have been published on the CQC website.