Ealing Hospital NHS Trust has declared full compliance with 22 out of the 24 core Government standards as part of a national health check of all English NHS Trusts.
Patients and the public can see how local Trusts say they measure up against 24 core standards (with 44 parts) in areas like safety, clinical effectiveness and patient focus. These standards are part of the Healthcare Commission’s (HCC) annual health check on English NHS trusts, which replaced the NHS star ratings.
The Ealing Hospital NHS Trust’s Board declared full compliance with all standards at 31 March 2008, with the exception of the need to improve areas around infection control (standard C4a) and medical devices usage (standard C4b). Action has now been taken to improve performance against both standards. The Trust has been compliant with C4a since April and plans are in place to sustain that position. An action plan is also in place to achieve and sustain compliance against C4b by July.
The Healthcare Commission will take a view on whether the declarations are accurate after carrying out a cross-checking exercise to compare our declaration with other sources of information. HCC will screen the performance data produced by the Trust and will gather information from their own assessors, and local patient representatives and Trust Governors among others. The annual performance rating for 2007/8, of which this is a part, will be published in October.
Trust Chief Executive, Julie Lowe, said: “These core standards are about a level of service that is acceptable to patients and can be adopted by our staff. We are encouraged by our latest results, with full compliance in most areas including partnership working; good use of resources and effective staff training. We recognise the areas which require improvement and have already taken steps to ensure full and sustained compliance by July. This should stand us in good stead when inspected further by the Healthcare Commission.”
Trust pledges to improve the patient experience: 13 May 2008
Last year Ealing Hospital NHS Trust pledged to make improving the experience of patients during their stay in hospital a top priority. Therefore, in October 2007 a two year programme of improvements were commenced.
The Trust, which has recently received disappointing results in the national patients’ survey, has been focussing on ways to ensure that patients feel they are better cared for, and that their views and comments are being listened to and acted upon.
Trust Chief Executive, Julie Lowe, said: “We believe that the changes we are implementing now will improve the way we provide services to patients and make patients feel they are part of the decision making process in our hospital.
“We have set up an Improving Patient Experience Group led by our Director of Nursing, Paul Reeves, and made up of staff, patients and Trusts Governors, to explore what we are doing right, and where we need to focus on to make things better.”
Paul Reeves said: “The national patients’ survey is carried out once a year and the results published this week relate to a survey of patients from last August. We are now carrying out surveys of patients on our wards every week to gain up-to-date information from them which we can act on quickly.
“So far the main concerns have centred around cleanliness, food, and the quality of communication – both written and verbal. We are now drawing up a series of action plans to address these issues and are publicising to our staff and patients what their concerns are and how we are going to do something about them.
This includes a banner in the hospital main reception showing what major concerns patients have and what we are doing to address them. For instance, patients have commented that staff do not always clean their hands with gel. We have now put gel on every bed and Matrons are driving home the CleanYourHands messages to remind staff.
“We are also planning to have action months on specific topics in the hospital – on cleaning hands, on improving the environment, on reducing night time noise and disruption.
“We are hopeful that this work will go a long way to ensuring that we have more favourable results from the 2008 national patients’ survey.”
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