Shropshire Star

Oswestry's orthopaedic hospital rated 'Good' in latest inspection

Shropshire's specialist orthopaedic hospital has been rated as ‘Good’ overall by the Care Quality Commission and ‘Outstanding’ for caring in an inspection report published today.

Published

The findings show significant improvement for the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital, which was rated ‘Requires Improvement’ when its last inspection was published in March 2016.

Chief Executive Mark Brandreth, who took over at the top just after the last inspection, said the success was down to each and every one of the hospital's staff.

Inspectors looked at all of the trust’s core services during the inspection in November last year, and followed that up with a leadership check in December called a 'Well Led Review' – for which the trust was also rated ‘Good’.

Mr Brandreth said: “I am delighted for our fantastic staff, who really deserve to receive a CQC report like this.

“It is rich in detail about the many examples of outstanding practice that the inspectors observed during their time with us, and it made me so proud to read it. I truly believe they are the best staff in the NHS.

“The trust has come a long way in a short period of time. We recognised the issues that saw us rated as ‘Requires Improvement’ three years ago, and have worked hard to address them."

Improvement

The one area still rated as requires improvement was in critical care.

Mr Brandreth stressed that this was not in patient care but in recording of risk.

He said: "We are, and rightly, measured against hospitals such as major university teaching hospitals, despite only having four critical care beds. We have an action plan that we are working to to bring our rating in critical care up."

Bev Tabernacle, director of nursing, added: “It makes me so proud to read this report and see the work we have all done together being recognised by our inspectors. It reflects what our own patients have been consistently telling us.

“We have focused on how we monitor quality standards of patient care, through a process called Sustaining Quality Through Assessment and Review, and developed processes to make sure we are an organisation that really learns from incidents."