Great Western Hospital continues to be ‘good’ in most areas
The CQC report comes nine months after the inspection
Great Western Hospital’s medical care is “well-run” and has enough staff to ensure “safe and effective care”, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has found.
They are releasing a report today about an inspection which was carried out last May.
Since the inspection was part of their monitoring services and focused on specific areas, the rating for Great Western Hospital remains the same.
Luisa Goddard, Chief Nurse at GWH, said: “We are delighted to maintain our ‘Good’ rating for unscheduled medical care at the Great Western Hospital which is testament to the hard work of our amazing teams.
“Staff were praised for treating patients, relatives and visitors with compassion and kindness, while patients described care as excellent”.
The service is currently rated as ‘good’ in the categories ‘safe’, ‘effective’, ‘caring’ and ‘ well-led’, but ‘responsive’ continues to require improvement.
The report states: “People were in control of their care and treatment. Additional support was available through enhanced care processes and provision. However, staff were not always aware of the communication aids they had access to, to support people with communication needs”.
Ms. Goodard added: “Of course there are areas want to improve, and we are continually working to maintain standards around infection control, privacy and dignity and patient records.
“We always welcome feedback from the Care Quality Commission and use this as a measure of the quality of care we provide.”
Great Western Hospital provides both planned and unplanned medical care for all adults across ten wards.
In total, the hospital is equipped with 320 beds.
Those who were cared for in corridors while they were waiting for a bed to become available to them, said they “felt safe although some wanted more privacy”.
The report praises the staff’s teamwork and good handling of care records and risk assessments as well as their efforts to ensure that people were “well-informed” and received “regular care”, including food and drink.
The inspection also found that safety incidents were manged well by leaders who then also worked to make sure to learn from them.
The delay in publishing the report is due to problems caused by a large-scale transformation programme at CQC.
They said they are “taking urgent steps to ensure that inspection reports are published in a much timelier manner”.