Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust patient safety 'inadequate'

The Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust has been told it must take action

Urgent improvements must be made to protect the safety of patients at an NHS hospitals trust, inspectors said.

Safety in medical care and the accident and emergency department at Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust was "inadequate", according to the latest Care Quality Commission (CQC) report.

Inspectors said not enough experienced nurses were on duty and operations were regularly cancelled.

The trust apologised and said it would continue to make improvements.

The unannounced inspection at the Royal Cornwall Hospital (RCHT), Treliske, and West Cornwall Hospital, Penzance, was carried out in June to check it had made improvements ordered after a previous inspection in January 2014.

Chief inspector of hospitals Prof Sir Mike Richards said: "In the main emergency department, there were occasions when there were not enough staff to provide a safe environment for patients. People have been waiting too long to be admitted."

Mr Richards said the trust had been told it must make improvements in 14 main areas - including staffing arrangements - and another unannounced inspection would follow "in due course".

'Not good enough'

Andrew MacCallum, deputy chief executive of RCHT, said the trust had been aware of some of the long-term issues and needed "to work faster and with increased impact on those areas".

He said: "In terms of those inadequate aspects of care... I'm very sorry about that. I don't think it was good enough.

"This is just not a hospital issue, this is a Cornwall-wide issue... We need better partnership working with primary care.

"Our demand for staff is such that we do need to work harder in getting more people to come and work with us."

Overall, the CQC gave the trust a "requires improvement" rating. Surgery at the Royal Cornwall Hospital and medical care at West Cornwall Hospital were both rated "good".