Sheffield maternity services 'inadequate' rating lifted

The CQC lifted all previous inadequate ratings at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, including maternity services, following a re-inspection which showed significant improvements were made

Maternity services at one of England's largest hospital trusts have had their rating of "inadequate" lifted.

Sheffield Teaching Hospitals maternity services were given the rating following a surprise inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in April.

The CQC said a re-inspection had since shown significant improvements had been made.

Inspectors said following the re-inspection they had lifted all previous inadequate ratings at the Trust.

Sarah Dronsfield, CQC head of hospital inspection, said: "When we returned to Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, it was promising to see that several improvements had been made.

The improvements the CQC found meant that none of the Trust's services were now rated as inadequate across the five domains inspections cover

Ms Dronsfield said inspectors had previously identified there were difficulties requesting additional assistance when women deteriorated in maternity services.

However, she said the re-inspection found "a specific emergency bleep number had been created for staff to respond to deteriorating women, which had improved response times and intervention".

'No complacency'

Trust chief Kirsten Major said following the visit by inspectors in April triage and assessment facilities in maternity services had been improved to "ensure women receive timely care".

"We have upgraded our facilities to be less cramped at busy times and have overhauled our monitoring and checking processes including adopting the 'fresh eyes' approach which provides an additional check on decisions and monitoring of women and their babies," she said.

Ms Major also said additional midwives had been recruited and new support roles had been created to help support women and babies immediately following birth.

She stressed there was "no complacency" and said improvement work would continue "as a priority to return all services back to a Good rating or better".

The Trust as a whole was rated as "requiring improvement" but with many services now rated as "good" or "outstanding".

Ms Dronsfield said: "Throughout our inspection we saw staff treating patients with compassion and kindness and delivered care which respected people's individual needs."