Failing trust should not be crowing about ‘successes’
The Care Quality Commission has rated services at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust as inadequate.
It is particularly worrying for the people of Shropshire, Telford and parts of the border, that the CQC’s report says inspectors are particularly concerned about A&E now, on top of the issues with maternity which triggered the trust being placed in special measures.
The reported response of the chief executive is that he wants us to focus on the things they do well, which is hard to do when the chief inspector of hospitals says that “there is clearly much work needed at the trust to ensure care is delivered in a way which ensures people are SAFE” and requires changes in 81 areas to improve the standard of care.
If the NHS trust was a school which had been found to be failing its pupils, put into special measures and then subsequently found to be still inadequate, the entire governing body would have been dismissed and replaced with an interim executive board. The head would probably have resigned too, or at the least stepped down.
It might concentrate minds wonderfully if the people at the top – who are ultimately responsible, faced a similar discipline, and not a spin on the jobs merry-go-round. A hospital, like a school, is judged on the totality of what it does and the results it achieves.
There is no point in crowing like a cock about how bits are excellent, when standing on the dung-heap of failure.
Mr M Bennett, Oswestry
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