Trusts must support staff or lose registration, says CQC

In the first batch of registrations, announced today, 64 trusts have been registered as fit to provide services with no conditions.

But Mid Staffordshire has been told it must:

• Improve the care and welfare of service users
• Improve assessment and monitoring of the quality of service provision
• Improve the safety, availability and suitability of equipment
• Improve its support for staff
• Increase the number of staff
• Improve complaints handling

We are moving to a system where we will be looking at whether trusts are meeting the standards today and tomorrow, rather than in the past.

Cynthia Bower

Milton Keynes has been found to be non-compliant with four of the 16 essential standards of safety and quality.

CQC regional director Roxy Boyce said: “There are long-standing problems at this trust in relation to its maternity services. The trust has not always responded fast enough to address concerns raised by patients or those raised by the regulator.”

The commission had said it intended to impose registration conditions on Milton Keynes when Monitor ordered the trust to hire external clinical experts to speed up improvements to its maternity care earlier this month.

The trust must:

• Increase midwifery staffing levels
• Improve the care and welfare of people using maternity and midwifery services
• Improve assessment and monitoring of the quality of maternity and midwifery service provision
• Improve its support for staff across the trust as a whole

The regulator has stressed that no trust, even those registered without conditions, can afford to be complacent and all must ensure that high standards are maintained.

CQC chief executive Cynthia Bower said: “It is absolutely the responsibility of trust boards to ensure that standards are in place. These are the standards that every patient should be able to expect when they receive NHS care and they are now legally enforceable. This is a tough new system and we have stronger enforcement powers than ever before to make sure services improve.”

From 1 April, 381 trusts in England will have to be registered with the CQC. This first batch will be followed by two others next week and the week after. After this date the CQC will begin continuously monitoring standards.

Ms Bower said: “We are moving to a system where we will be looking at whether trusts are meeting the standards today and tomorrow, rather than in the past.”

The regulator will carry out more inspections – up to 2,000 compliance reviews per year - and take greater account of patients’ views, using a variety of sources of intelligence to create quality and risk profiles for every trust.

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