Improvements to patient safety at the Isle of Wight NHS Trust have led to the organisation’s risk rating being lowered by the independent health regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
The CQC uses six risk ratings for hospitals, with a score of one being the worst and six the best. Last year, the Isle of Wight NHS Trust received a score of four, but in their latest Intelligent Monitoring (IM) report the CQC has lowered the Trust’s risk to a five – just one below the top level rating.
Commenting on the report, Trust Chief Executive Karen Baker, said:
“This is real testament to the commitment of our staff, who continue to work tirelessly to ensure patients receive the best care possible. Our Trust’s vision is to deliver ‘quality care, everyone, every time’ and this report shows that we are truly working to achieve this aim. There is still work to do, and there are some important areas in which we need to continue making improvements. However, I am confident that we have robust action plans in place to tackle those areas.”
Further work is being done to ensure any remaining risks are reduced, for example the proportion of patients who are assessed for Venous Thromboembolism (VTE), or blood clots that form within veins. The latest results (February 2014) show that this has led to 94.1% of patients now being assessed, compared with the national standard of 95%, and further improvements are expected to be shown in the March 2014 data. This is because the Trust has recently upgraded the Electronic Prescribing System, called JAC, to ensure that medications cannot be prescribed until a full VTE risk assessment is carried out.
The report uses the CQC’s new model for monitoring a range of key indicators about NHS acute hospitals, which relate to five key questions that are asked of all services – are they safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led? These Key Lines of Enquiry (KLOEs) will form the same questions the CQC ask of the Trust when they are due to carry out a major inspection in June 2014.
