Great Western Hospital's maternity service downgraded

The hospital provides maternity services to Swindon, Wiltshire, and the surrounding areas

A hospital's maternity service rating has been downgraded by Care Quality Commission (CQC).

It has downgraded the Great Western Hospital's NHS Foundation Trust maternity services from "good" to "requires improvement".

This inspection at the hospital in Swindon was carried out in September, as part of the CQC's national maternity services inspection programme.

The hospital said in a statement it was "disappointed" with the new rating.

Great Western Hospital provides maternity services to Swindon, Wiltshire, and the surrounding areas.

The CQC downgraded both the leadership of the service and its safety from good to requires improvement.

Carolyn Jenkinson, CQC's deputy director of secondary and specialist healthcare, said: "When we inspected maternity services at Great Western Hospital, we found a deterioration in the level of care being provided to women, people using the service and their babies.

Hospital bosses say there has been "considerable progress" since CQC inspectors visited

"Leaders weren't acting quickly when issues were found, and this was putting people at risk of harm.

"People had experienced 3rd and 4th degree perineal tears and bleeding during birth, but these had been downgraded in severity, which meant they were not investigated as thoroughly as they should've been to keep people safe."

She added that staff "didn't always assess people" when they arrived.

"This meant people weren't always seen in order of clinical need and staff could miss if someone's condition worsened," Ms Jenkinson said. "However, the trust started to make improvements to this following inspector feedback."

Staffing levels were not always safe, Ms Jenkinson said, and the service had been short staffed during the inspection, although the trust has filled some vacancies since then.

"There was also high levels of staff sickness and inspectors were told this was due to stress," she added.

"However, we found that staff were doing their best to provide good care despite the challenging circumstances and worked well together as a team.

"Leaders also recognised that improvements needed to be made to the service and had started to work on this."

'Improvements have been made'

A Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust spokesperson said: "Since the inspection was carried out six months ago, we have made considerable progress on improving the care we deliver to local people.

"Improvements introduced include a new triage system that is ensuring most women and birthing people are seen within 15 minutes, more robust processes for audits and reviews, and significant improvement in mandatory training compliance for our staff.

"In their report, inspectors identified good morale and teamwork, well-controlled infection risks and noted collaborative working with a university to train staff in 'Black Maternity Matters' as outstanding practice.

"In a recent CQC survey conducted with women and birthing people who had used our maternity services, the Trust scored third highest in the country for questions relating to antenatal check-ups and care on the ward after birth, and in the top five Trusts for questions relating to care at home after birth.

"We recognise that there is still more work we need to do, and our maternity leadership team is working hard to drive forward continuous improvement to enable us to provide the very best level of service to our community."