Hospital services rated 'requires improvement'

Surgery at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital has been downgraded from "good"

Two services at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital require work to improve, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has said.

Urgent and emergency care services remain at "requires improvement", as it was after an earlier inspection in March, while surgery has been downgraded from "good".

Amanda Lyndon, CQC deputy director of operations in the Midlands, said while many improvements had been made, changes around "the amount of time people waited for care" was needed.

The hospital's executive director Matt Metcalfe described the CQC's report as "extremely helpful" and added: "I'm incredibly proud of the work our teams are doing to drive the improvements that are required."

"The downgrade relates pretty much exclusively to the lengthening waiting lists for patients for surgery," Mr Metcalfe said.

"The previous inspection was before Covid and we are still in the recovery journey."

The hospital's executive director Matt Metcalfe said lengthening waiting lists was the main issue affecting surgical services

Labour MP for Edgbaston, Preet Gill, said she had written a letter to the wider University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust, which comprises four hospitals, expressing concerns about the CQC report.

"I'm concerned about the safety issue that this report highlights," she said.

"It is not right that when people are turning up for emergency and urgent care, we are seeing overcrowding, we're seeing delays - people not being able to get a bed."

In July, Mr Metcalfe said the hospital was "delighted" to undergo an emergency department "reset", which he described as a "whole hospital response" to the pressures in emergency care.

However, he conceded improvement was still needed and added: "We need to put all the pace behind that [improvement].

"We remain focused on improving the experience and outcomes for everyone who comes through our doors."

The CQC carried out an unannounced inspection of the hospital where it again rated how effective, caring and well-led surgery services are as "good".

The safety of the service has again been rated "requires improvement", and how responsive the service is has dropped from "good" to "requires improvement".

Ms Lyndon said this was due to a decline in how responsive the service was, following the Covid-19 pandemic, and effects on performance and waiting times across the NHS, which affected the overall rating.

Edgbaston MP, Preet Gill, has written to the wider NHS trust following the report

'People waiting too long'

"During our inspection of urgent and emergency care services, we were encouraged by improvements the trust had made but they still had more work to do to ensure people were safe," Ms Lyndon said.

She said staff did not maintain people's records in line with the trust's requirements for including information on risk assessments and care delivery.

Patients had also waited too long to receive care in the department because of crowding and demand.

But, she said "other departments in the hospital experienced delays in discharging people to social care placements, which had a knock-on effect on hospital capacity".

Richard Burden, chair of Healthwatch Birmingham, said: "Every patient deserves to have care that is safe and is timely."

Patients had been telling the organisation that they had received "really compassionate care from the staff," he said, "and it's important that we acknowledge that."

"But they also tell us that they're waiting too long in Accident and Emergency departments; they tell us they're sick of having their surgery appointments cancelled and these are the kind of things that the CQC are bringing out," he added.

"The good news is that there are improvements being made... but there's a long, long way to go yet."

University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the QE and three others hospitals in the area, was previously rated inadequate for how well led the trust is as a whole.

A new CQC report on the trust is to be published imminently.