Trust Receives 'Good' Rating From The Care Quality Commission

Community health services across Lincolnshire have been rated as 'good' following a comprehensive inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

The inspection, which took place in September 2014, looked at services provided by Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust (LCHS), including those for inpatients, urgent care, community health, children and families, and end of life care.

The inspections assessed services on five key areas: safe, caring, effective, responsive and well-led.

Andrew Morgan, Chief Executive of LCHS, said: "The Trust Board and I were delighted to hear the Care Quality Commission has rated us as 'good' overall. Inspectors spent almost a week with our staff and patients, and we were pleased they were able to reflect and agree with our own evaluations about where our strengths and challenges lie. We were particularly proud to hear inspectors talk about the feedback from our patients when looking at the caring nature of our services, which they described as overwhelmingly positive. We would now like to focus on making improvements to transform LCHS from a good organisation into an outstanding one."

LCHS Chief Nurse and Director of Operations, Sue Cousland, added: "This inspection clearly demonstrates the effective and responsive nature of services we provide in Lincolnshire. In particular, the CQC have commented on the high standard of caring based on their observations of staff carrying out their daily duties and by the number of accolades received from patients and their families. We are immensely proud of our staff and remain absolutely committed to supporting them to continue to deliver high quality care in the community.

"We fully acknowledge and accept the findings and have already initiated work with our staff in the areas identified for improvement. For example, there is currently no recognised national safer staffing model for community services so, working with our senior clinicians, we have devised our own model to ensure we can deliver safe care at the right place at the right time. This was acknowledged by the CQC and has been recognised nationally as an important piece of work. As such we are taking action to implement it across the county as soon as possible.

"Many staff also spoke of the frustration they experience with the current information technology systems. In response, we have already replaced 647 old laptops belonging to frontline clinical staff with new, lighter and more responsive machines to ensure everyone is able to work more effectively. We are also working very closely with staff to streamline our record keeping requirements so that they are all able to spend more time delivering direct care to patients and their families."

The CQC highlighted specific areas for improvement. These include:

• ensuring all staff have access to regular protected time for in-depth reflection on their clinical practice;
• ensuring systems are in place across the trust to share learning across the organisation following incidents;
• demonstrating all premises and equipment are fit for purpose and maintained appropriately.

Inspectors also highlighted a number of good practice areas. These include:

• the care and treatment of patients and their families in palliative care services and throughout the Macmillan and community nursing services. Across end of life services staff demonstrated compassion and commitment;
• more than 98 per cent of patients were discharged, admitted or transferred within four hours of arrival at minor injury units over the last year;
• a safeguarding pilot within the school nursing service to manage the needs of vulnerable children and young people.