Issue - meetings

To examine the first draft of the Quality Accounts for 2012/13 of the East Cheshire NHS Trust and provide comments to be included within the final draft.

The Committee considered the draft Quality Accounts for East Cheshire NHS Trust for 2012/13. Kath Senior, Director of Nursing, Performance & Quality at East Cheshire presented an overview of the accounts by highlighting some of the quality improvements during 2012/13 and identifying the priorities for quality improvement in 2013/14.

The Committee asked questions and the following points were made:

·         The Trust wanted to assist in intervention and prevention to avoid people having to go to hospital which would help to reduce the demand on services.

·         Staff were encouraged to report near misses as well as incidents so that the Trust could learn from them.

·         Falls in hospital had been reduced however it had not been reduced as far as the Trust had targeted at the beginning of 2012/13.

·         Fewer patients were scheduled to have operations during December because people did not want to have them before Christmas and more staff took annual leave during December. That had an effect on the number of operations cancelled which made the figures appear favourable.

·         The Trust needed to improve the way patients were scheduled for operations to decrease the number of cancelled operations.

·         Availability of Out Patient services after 5:00pm should be extended to increase convenience for patients who preferred evening appointments.

·         The Committee was pleased with the aspirations for improvements to dementia diagnosis and care. It was considered necessary to be aware of a patient’s other conditions or health issues in addition to their dementia to ensure they were not overlooked.

·         The Trust had created supervisory posts in the nursing teams to coordinate nurses and take responsibility for performance and care quality.

RESOLVED:

(a)  That Kath Senior be thanked for attending the meeting.        

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