West Sussex maternity services 'well on the way' to restoring previous ratings

In December, the Care Quality Commission downgraded services at Worthing Hospital, St Richard’s Hospital in Chichester, and Haywards Heath’s Princess Royal Hospital to ‘requires improvement’ while those at the Royal Sussex County Hospital were downgraded to ‘inadequate’.

The commission issued a warning notice to the University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the hospitals, telling it to ‘take action to ensure significant improvements were made to staffing, training, governance and the overall culture of the services’.

During a meeting at West Sussex County Council on Friday (September 23) Dr Rob Haigh, chief medical officer with the trust, said they were ‘well on the way’ to restoring their previous ratings.

Dr Haigh acknowledged there was still more work to be done but added: “The maternity services at St Richard’s and at Worthing and Princess Royal do remain of an exceptionally high standard.

“‘Requires improvement’ doesn’t necessarily imply that services are poor – it identifies areas where further improvements can be made – and of course we should always be striving for the most outstanding care possible.”

Among the issues raised for improvement across the four maternity units in December were a shortage of staff and staff not being up-to-date with training in key skills.

At Worthing, morale was seen to be low and the workforce exhausted; at St Richard’s, records were not always clear and easily available to all staff; and at the Royal Sussex, not all infection risks were controlled well and not all safety information collected was accurate.

A follow-up visit in April was much more positive.

Carolyn Jenkinson, the Care Quality Commission’s head of hospital inspection, said: “At this inspection we saw a number of improvements at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust’s maternity department, which showed they have met their requirements in the warning notice.

“The trust still have work to do, but it is positive that so much progress has been made, and we’ll continue to monitor them to make sure these are embedded and built upon.”