Warrington and Halton Hospitals have been rated ‘GOOD’ overall by the Care Quality Commission, following their inspection in March and April 2019, with Critical Care awarded ‘Outstanding’ for Care.

The report, published today (24th July 2019), shows significant improvement across all five key lines of enquiry (Safe, Caring, Responsive, Effective and Well Led) with the CQC awarding ‘GOOD’ to each element for both hospitals.

This is a significant improvement and shows positive movement across all key areas. The Trust is continuing with its journey to be outstanding and builds on a strong platform, with the CQC inspectors identifying numerous areas of ‘outstanding practice’ including: The Smart Heart programme run by consultant cardiologist Dr Ahmed Farag with primary school children, the Frailty Unit and the selection by NHS England of the Consultant Nurse as their ‘expert advisor’: the widely adopted facilities and practices for those living with dementia, Critical Care’s outreach practice, and the Maternity Bereavement service which won the Butterfly Award Best Hospital Bereavement Team.

Mel Pickup, Chief Executive said,

“This CQC GOOD rating demonstrates a significant shift in the standards of we deliver for our patients in just 20 months since our last inspection was published.

“Following the last inspection we changed our mission to focus on not only achieving a GOOD rating but to take the Trust to OUTSTANDING for our patients, our communities and each other.

“We took great pleasure today in renaming the improvement programme, which has for the last 30 months being called ‘Getting to Good, Moving to Outstanding’ to simply ‘Moving to Outstanding’. We are already working on the areas in the report that the inspectors felt still had room for improvement.’

“Our 4.4K staff seized the opportunity to ‘Be the Change’ and today’s report is a testament to their sheer determination that nothing but GOOD was what we wanted for our patients. “This is the culmination of two year’s exceptional effort, hard work and determination by WHH Staff and Volunteers. Today belongs to them.”

Report summary findings:

We rated safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led as good. All five core services we inspected during this inspection we rated as good. In rating the trust, we took into account the current ratings of the six services not inspected this time.

• We rated well-led for the trust overall as good.
• Our rating for Warrington Hospital and Halton General Hospital were both good which was an improvement since the last inspection.
• Our ratings for medical care and critical care at Warrington Hospital were both good which was an improvement from the last inspection. Our ratings for surgery at Warrington Hospital and Halton General Hospital were both good which was the same rating as the last inspection.
• We rated maternity at Warrington Hospital as good. We previously inspected maternity jointly with gynaecology so we cannot compare our new ratings directly with previous ratings. We rated outpatients at Halton General Hospital as good. We previously inspected outpatients with diagnostic imaging so we cannot compare our new ratings directly with previous ratings.

What to know more?

Read the full report here.