Issue - meetings

To examine the Quality Accounts for 2012/13 of the Mid Cheshire NHS Hospital Trust.

The Group considered the draft quality accounts of Mid Cheshire NHS Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust for 2012/13. Julie Smith, Director of Nursing and Quality at Mid Cheshire presented the quality accounts and highlighted some of the key achievements and challenges that Mid Cheshire had faced during 2012/13.

The Committee asked questions and the following points were made:

·         One of the main challenges for Mid Cheshire had been the inability to recruit enough nurses. There had been 80 vacancies at one time but a new robust recruitment and retention programme had helped to reduce the vacancies to seven. Nurses from oversees had to be recruited due to the low availability of nurses in the local area.

·         The Trust hadn’t met the targets set for reducing smoking during pregnancy or breast feeding but had been working with Public Health to decrease smoking rates and increase the number of new mothers breast feeding.

·         The Trust had reviewed the Francis Report into Mid Staffordshire Hospitals failings and used some of the recommendations to help focus its own efforts to make improvements.

·         The Committee praised the quality of the accounts from an In Patient perspective but was concerned that no mention of Out Patient statistics such as waiting times and care quality had been included in the accounts.

·         The number of people who had not received an operation within 28 dates of an original date being cancelled was 10.83% above target and equated to 70 patients.

·         The biggest contributor to incidents in hospital was falls and there were a variety of reasons for why patients fell. Julie Smith assured the Committee that this was not caused by low care quality due to under staffing of nurses. The Committee wanted to see statistics for falls and an action plan to tackle them included in the accounts.

·         There was an issue with the delay between patients being discharged and receiving their prescriptions. Investment in ward based Pharmacies had helped to reduce the issue but more could be done. One contributing factor was patients wanting to leave the hospital as soon as possible after being discharged but delays also came from doctors not writing prescriptions in a timely manner.

·         The Committee suggested it would be useful to include actual number of patients in statistics and not just percentages to provide greater context about the number of people affected.

·         Julie Smith anticipated that the biggest challenges for the Trust in 2013/14 would be: dealing with staff shortages; reducing mortality rates; and reducing smoking during pregnancy and increasing breast feeding.

RESOLVED:

(a)  That Julie Smith be thanked for attending the meeting.         

(b)  That the Chairman of the Committee write a letter to the Mid Cheshire Hospital NHS Foundation Trust to provide feedback on its Quality Accounts for 2012/13 to be included in the final version of the Quality Accounts.