By Harry Mottram: an unannounced inspection by the Care Quality Commission on the RUH in July resulted in the hospital’s rating has been downgraded from “good” to “requires improvement” following an assessment.
The CQC said: “We carried out this unannounced focused inspection on 27 July 2023 because we had received information of concern regarding the safety and quality of the medical care (including older people’s care) core service.”
They continued: “At this inspection, we inspected safe and well led but did not inspect caring, effective or responsive as the information of concern were not within these key questions. Our focused methodology allows us to rate a service when we have inspected the full key question. We considered information and data regarding medical care and gathered feedback around the experience of patients using medical care services at Royal United Hospital, Bath. At our last comprehensive inspection in June 2018, we rated the trust overall as good and medical care was also rated good.”
The BBC reported: “The site houses 12 medical inpatient wards with a total of 381 beds and provides a range of services including medicine and surgery, services for women and children, accident and emergency services, and diagnostic and clinical support services. During the focused check, the CQC only looked at whether the hospital was safe and well led. Its report found the safety of its services, its responsiveness to people’s needs and the way it was led required improvements.”
A Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust spokesperson told the BBC they welcomed the report, were fully committed to making the improvements identified and had already started work on the improvements required.
“We were pleased that the report also identified many positives, inspectors praised the ‘outstanding programme’ for international nurses, our ability to manage patient safety incidents well and the way managers and ward leaders were supported to make the wards a welcoming place to work,” they said.
“The RUH is committed to being an organisation where everyone matters and we would like to reassure patients that our staff remain fully committed to providing the very best standards of care at all times.”
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