Hospital told to make urgent improvements

BOSSES at Tameside Hospital have been told to make urgent improvements by a health watchdog.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has issued a formal warning to Tameside Hospital NHS Foundation for immediate improvement to standards of care or face further action.

The warning follows an unannounced visit by inspectors to the hospital in Ashton last October to follow up a previous review of compliance.

They found the trust continued not to comply with a regulation requiring the assessment and monitoring of service quality and set a deadline of Friday by which the trust must come up to standard.

Inspectors found systems weren’t sufficiently robust to ensure all risks were identified and managed, and the approach to documenting patient needs and completing care plans was inconsistent. In some cases, assessment records of patient falls were incomplete or incorrect. Nutrition records had missing information and didn’t always record actions in response to patient weight loss or refusal of meals. Medicines, inspectors found, weren’t always secured — and staff seemed unaware when storage procedures were being breached.

If the hospital doesn’t come up to standard by the end of the week, enforcement powers include restricting the services the hospital can offer, or in serious cases suspending or cancelling a service. Prosecution or fines could also follow.

Debbie Westhead, interim regional Director of CQC in the North-West, said: “It is unacceptable that suitable improvement has not been made. Tameside Hospital NHS Foundation Trust needs to address this issue as a matter of urgency.”