King's College Hospital NHS Trust still 'Requires Improvement' according to CQC report
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) recently completed inspections of sites run by the Kings College Hospital NHS Trust.
The locations visited included King's College Hospital (KCH) at Denmark Hill, the Princess Royal University Hospital (PRU) in Orpington and satellite sites.
Overall, the Trust has been rated as "Requires Improvement", a result that is overall unchanged from the 2017 CQC inspection.
The visits were unannounced and took place during late January and early February, 2019. Core services inspected at KCH included the Emergency Department, Surgery, Maternity, End of Life and Outpatients (including satellite Dialysis services), where the same five questions were raised for all services: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs, and well led?
Against these domains, the following ratings were awarded to KCH:
- Safe – Requires Improvement (unchanged from previous rating)
- Effective – Good (improvement on previous rating)
- Caring – Good (unchanged)
- Responsive – Requires Improvement (unchanged)
- Well-led – Good (improvement on previous rating).
Highlights from the inspections include improved ratings for KCH's Maternity and End of Life Care to 'Good'. However, Denmark Hill's Urgent and Emergency Services' rating dropped to 'Requires Improvement', due to issues in mandatory training; the prescribing, giving, recording and storing of medicines; the design and layout of specific areas of the Emergency Department and the effectiveness of the department's leadership.
The rating for the PRU remains as 'Requires Improvement' overall, however Urgent and Emergency Services have been rated as 'Inadequate' at this location, with drops in four of the five domains – Safe, Caring, Responsive and Well-led.
To read more about the CQC's findings and recommendations, the latest inspection report can be found here.
