Worcestershire hospitals emergency care improvements praised

The CQC said the overall rating for Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust remains as "requires improvement"

Emergency treatment at hospitals in Worcestershire has improved, inspectors have said, but further work is needed to ensure better care.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) said the overall rating for Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust remains as "requires improvement".

However urgent and emergency services were upgraded from "inadequate" to "requires improvement".

The hospital trust said it was "positive news" for staff and patients.

It runs hospitals in Worcester, Redditch and Kidderminster, with Accident & Emergency units based at the Worcestershire Royal and Alexandra hospitals.

"In medical care services, people told us staff were kind and caring and gave examples of being supported emotionally by staff," Charlotte Rudge, CQC deputy director of operations in the Midlands, said.

The hospital trust runs sites in Worcester, Kidderminster and Redditch

In a report, the watchdog said medical services staff at Alexandra Hospital, in Redditch, had "worked well together for people's benefit," and had supported patients with making decisions about their care, adding that staff had also understood how to protect people from abuse.

However, inspectors said improvements to medicine storage and prescription monitoring were still needed, highlighting a lack of paediatric nurses, a duplication of medicine charts and a lack of processes to protect people from harm.

The report also highlighted there had been delays with ambulance handovers, which had prevented patients from being treated more quickly.

Ambulance waiting times

Matthew Hopkins, chief executive of the hospital trust, said a number of actions had already been taken to address areas of concern at the hospitals, following the inspection in November.

"This latest report means that we are no longer rated inadequate in any area across any of our hospitals," he said.

"Outstanding areas of practice were also recognised in both of our emergency departments."

He added that teams had continued to work closely with ambulance services to explore ways of cutting waiting times and handover delays, which remained the trust's "number one quality and safety improvement" priority.