Milton Keynes hospital's emergency services shift from 'requiring improvement' to 'good' after new inspection

The Care Quality Commission raised the rating following an inspection in April.

At the same time they also upgraded the hospitals general safety to ‘good’ instead of the previous ‘requires improvement’.

The new inspection was prompted in part by a notification from Milton Keynes University Hospital to CQC regarding an incident following which a person using the service died. T

The information shared with CQC about the incident indicated potential concerns about the systemic safety and quality of people’s care, which were examined on this inspection.

A CQC spokesperson said: “Inspectors found the safety and quality of people’s care was good. The hospital was proactively implementing learning following the incident to better protect people in similar circumstances.”

They said the hospital’s score for being safe and well-ledwas found to good in that it was “effective, caring, and responsive.

As a result, the Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust will remain rated good overall, and for effective, caring, responsive, and well-led.

It will be raised from requires improvement to good for being safe.

Stuart Dunn, CQC deputy director of operations in the east of England, said: “When we inspected the urgent and emergency services at Milton Keynes University Hospital, we were pleased to see leaders supported a strong learning and safety culture. This had led to clear improvements to the quality of people’s care and a reduction in the length of people’s stays in the emergency department.

“Staff treated people with empathy and compassion and respected people’s dignity and consent. For example, they used privacy screens when transferring people from an ambulance stretcher to a hospital bed. Staff discussed people’s psychological and emotional needs during handovers.

“Leaders thoroughly investigated incidents when things had gone wrong, involving the people affected, and we saw changes had been made to improve people’s care in future. Leaders encouraged collective problem-solving, inviting staff and partner organisations to raise concerns and contribute to improvement work.

“People told us staff were busy, especially during peak times, but that they felt safe and were seen quickly by nursing staff when they arrived. Staff gave people clear and real time information to manage expectations on wait times and since our last inspection the trust had added new same-day emergency care services, which allowed some people to receive care quickly without staying overnight in the hospital.

“Staff also worked well with teams from separate mental health providers to quickly triage people with mental health concerns.”

“Inspectors also found there were some areas still in need of improvements. Leaders hadn’t identified a shortage of medical staff as a potential risk to people’s safety, some emergency equipment wasn’t checked daily to ensure it was ready for use, and some time-crucial medications weren’t always being prescribed in a timely way. Leaders showed action they were taking to reduce these risks following our inspection, including a robust recruitment plan.

However, the inspectors found the service didn’t have an approved policy on how to respond when the emergency department was reaching its capacity. Inspectors were provided with a draft of a new policy before this inspection finished.

The report will be published on CQC’s website..