The Isle of Wight NHS Trust has been rated as ‘good’ overall following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), a significant improvement on the previous ‘requires improvement’ rating.
The Trust is the only integrated acute, community, mental health and ambulance health care provider in England. Overall, the trust provides 23 core services for acute, community, mental health and ambulance services.
Between 22nd June and 23rd July, the CQC inspected a range of the trust’s mental health and community services, as well as 5 of the trust’s acute core services. These services included diagnostic imaging, medical services, surgical services, gynaecology services and children and young people’s services. CQC also looked specifically at management and leadership of the trust to answer the key question – is the trust well led?
Inspectors found that a number of improvements had been made and embedded throughout the trust since their previous visit in 2019. As a result, the trust’s overall rating has been upgraded from requires improvement to good. It is also rated as good for whether its services are safe, effective, caring responsive and well led.
As this is a combined trust, each service type was also rated. Acute services and community services were rated as good overall. As only some of the trust’s mental health services were inspected, the service was not fully re-rated, and it remains recqquires improvement. However, inspectors did note a number of improvements had been made across the mental health inpatient and community teams and acknowledge the work towards improving the care for people that use services.
CQC has also recommended that The Isle of Wight NHS Trust should be taken out of System Oversight Framework level 4 of the new Recovery Support Programme (previously special measures) from a quality perspective following this inspection. Ted Baker, CQC’s chief inspector of hospitals, found that sufficient progress had been made to justify the recommendation to NHS England and NHS Improvement, although the trust will receive ongoing support to ensure that its performance continues to improve.
Ted Baker said:
“At this inspection of the Isle of Wight NHS Trust, we found sustainable improvements have been put in place and embedded. This is a great achievement, the more so as it has taken place against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Article continues below this advertisement “Throughout the inspection, the team received feedback that was overwhelmingly positive about staff often going the extra mile to support patients. The care and support received exceeded patient’s expectations, and this has resulted in the trust’s community services receiving an outstanding rating for being caring.
“The trust has worked incredibly hard to put the improvements needed in place and I am happy to recommend to NHS England and NHS Improvement that the Isle of Wight NHS Trust should be taken out of System Oversight Framework level 4 of the new Recovery Support Programme following this inspection.
“I want to congratulate all of the staff and the leadership at the Isle of Wight NHS Trust for their hard work and dedication during this time. We look forward to returning at a later date to see what further improvements have taken place.”
Although the CQC found a number of examples of outstanding practice during this inspection, there were some areas for improvement:
- The trust must ensure there are enough clinical psychologists and other appropriate staff to meet the needs of patient requiring this service and that patients are supported appropriately if they need to wait for long periods.
- The trust must ensure the environment at the health-based place of safety on Seagrove ward is fit for purpose and meet the requirements of the Mental Health Act Code of Practice, and ensure that the environment provides dignity and respect to users of the service.
- The trust must ensure that, on Osborne ward, staff update patients’ risk assessments following an incident to reflect changing risks and care needs.
Maggie Oldham, Chief Executive of the Isle of Wight NHS Trust, has said:
“The people who make up our Trust have worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic and even with all of those challenges they never lost focus on improving the services we provide to our community.
“It has been a long road to get to Good, but I am so proud of everyone that has contributed to this success. My sincere thanks go to all our staff, our volunteers, our partners and to our community for all their support.
“Being rated Good by the Care Quality Commission isn’t the end of our improvement journey – we know that there is more we can do, and our focus now will be on working with our partners to sustain the progress we have made and to ensure that our services are sustainable.
“I hope everyone working at the Trust can take a moment to appreciate the scale of this achievement and to reflect on their important contribution to our improvement – none of this would be possible without our wonderful staff. I cannot thank them enough.”
It's official! Our services are GOOD ✅
We're delighted that @CareQualityComm have rated our services GOOD and some Outstanding for caring. @ChiefExecIOWNHS Maggie Oldham said: "I am so proud of everyone… we never lost focus…"
➡️ https://t.co/OwnVoDPWIv#GreatToBeGood pic.twitter.com/gvVZAAMETg— Isle of Wight NHS Trust (@IOWNHS) September 23, 2021
Isle of Wight MP Bob Seely said:
“Delighted to hear the Isle of Wight NHS Trust has been rated Good overall following its recent inspection.
“This is a very significant achievement by the Island’s NHS teams who have managed to raise standards and improve services despite the added pressures of Covid-19.
“My thanks go to everyone working at the Isle of Wight NHS Trust – in the ambulance service, at St Mary’s Hospital, in Community Services and in Mental Health and Learning Disabilities.
“The challenge now is to sustain this improvement and to make sure that services continue to meet the needs of Islanders.”
The latest report will be published later on today at https://www.cqc.org.uk/provider/R1F/reports.
Congratulations to all at St,Marys. If we can stop or reverse our population growth on the Island, then the stress should subside a little. It’s the obvious answer to so many of our infrastruture, environmental & social problems. Listen up local politicians and planners..
Yes well done, local politicians don’t listen though, and planners don’t care, we need another hospital plain and simple.
I don’t know what hospital they visited ?
Mental health on the island is still not fit for purpose (unless you are a mad cat lady). I am sposed to see my physctrist every 3 months, but have not seen her for more then 2 years.
The only time that they show any sort of concern is when you are literally standing on a cliff edge. Very little empathy all round. Bit like this site really.
Maybe you should of contacted them when the 3 months was almost up, to check your appointment was ok and ongoing, rather than leave it for 2 years and then moan about it here.
Lmao, don’t you think I tried and tried and tried some more, even wrote to MP, however I did get a letter of apology from the head of the trust and from the national health minister at the time.
Still waiting for an appointment now after 3 years….(something about covid ?) Anyway I’m not just talking for myself, I’m talking for hundreds of people in a similar position as myself. Is that ok with you digby ? !
Whilst I am sure there are areas of this hospital that are fantastic, there are also bound to be areas that need improvement and investment. it does not appear the CQC have gone and investigated ALL parts of the hospital. For example, what about the ambulance service / medical transport? Sorry but it appears the CQC have gone in and done a very brief inspection here and I would not trust this rating at all.
Unless the CQC are going to promise to do full and detailed investigations and reports then there is no point to it.
Rather than make assumptions why not look for yourself?
https://www.cqc.org.uk/provider/R1F
This has obviously got nothing to do with seeing a doctor in the first place
It’s true everyone has worked hard throughout this difficult year plus, there’s still improvements to be made. I feel there are services that don’t cover a fair few and cater for their needs. Age group is one as they’re left hanging in limbo with very complex or painful conditions. There needs to be more involvement like there is in the military for example, where opportunity is seen and taken to improve the quality of life for people.
Covid hasn’t helped but huge gaps have to be bridged or we’ll have more people ending up with chronic conditions for no reason other than if time was taken to sort the problems much sooner. Own worst enemy
Why has Maggie Oldham not mentioned Community how where rated as outstanding, is it because she has no input with them and can not take the credit.
Yeah, they are so good that they didn’t even follow up my cancer operation with the post op checks I was supposed to have after 6 months. When 7 months went by it was up to me to chase them up. Disgraceful service from a hospital that is not fit for purpose. Before my cancer op I had to go to Portsmouth for pre op assessment. When I asked Portsmouth if those assessments could be done on the island their response was “No, we wouldn’t trust St Marys to interpret the results correctly”. Says it all really!