Care Quality Commission (CQC) new inspection regime

Professor Sir Mike Richards the new chief inspector of hospitals has announced that from now on CQC will be beefing up its inspections – bigger teams (perhaps 20), longer inspections (perhaps a week) and a mix of real health professionals and trained members of the public. All acute hospitals will be inspected by the end of 2015.

The first step will be trial inspections starting soon of 18 hospitals selected to represent different levels of ‘risk’, There will be 6 ‘low’ risk, 6 ‘high’ risk and 6 with a ‘variety of risks between’. The Royal Surrey will be one of them being in the middle category so an inspection in the coming months can be expected.

Results will be published and every hospital will be given a rating of ‘outstanding; good; require improvement; or inadequate’. I can’t say I’m in favour of such a broad single rating – hospitals are far more complex than hotels and my fear is that a good overall rating will hide aspects which are not so good but leave the public believing everything is grand. However we will see – the proof is in the pudding!

 

ITU expansion

If you go round the back of the hospital you will see building works. Here a new £multi-million expansion of ITU is underway. Good news for us all.

PLACE inspection of the hospital

Every year RSCH is obliged by the DoH to conduct a survey of the hospital's environment with results being sent to the DoH for analysis. This year the arrangement changed under the acronym PLACE (Patient Led Assessment of the Care Environment) and had to increase the involvement of patients (at least 50%). Overall results, which will allow the public to see how their hospital performs compared with others, will be published in September.

I was pleased to join the inspection teams to look at cleanliness, décor/maintenance, hygiene, tidiness/clutter and food quality. Overall the inspections covered all the wards and OP Departments, Day Surgery, Short Stay Surgical Unit, Endoscopy, A&E, ICU and EAU - so very comprehensive. As you can imagine results were mixed - some excellent and a few not so good and the latter will now be addressed.

When the national results are published I will put up a blog. Meanwhile if anyone wishes to be involved next year's PLACE let the hospital know.