The restrictions placed on North Bristol NHS Trust by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), following the Improvement Notice issued in April, have been lifted.
This means that North Bristol will be unconditionally registered with the CQC (which replaced the Healthcare Commission earlier this year) alongside most NHS trusts in England.
The concerns raised by the CQC – and which resulted in the Improvement Notice – centred around:
- The adequacy of corporate records to show that staff had received infection control training;
- And that the Trust Board did not have an appropriate assurance framework around infection prevention and control.
Since receiving the Improvement Notice in April, the Trust has undertaken a thorough review of its mandatory training programmes – including infection control – to ensure that all training is recorded centrally for every member of staff.
Every member of staff at NBT will soon be issued with a training ‘passport’. This is a personal record that can show, at a glance, what training has been undertaken, when it took place and when it needs to be updated. This will then be recorded on a central computer system that in turn, will alert line managers when individual staff members’ mandatory training needs updating. Individual staff members will be responsible for keeping their own ‘passport’ up-to-date.
To address the second part of the Improvement Notice, around assurances to the Trust Board, clear infection control strategic objectives have been established and signed off by the Board.
The Trust has also introduced a Quality Committee as part of its Clinical Governance arrangements. This has a responsibility to drive forward quality improvements, ensuring the Board is fully kept up-to-date with latest developments. In addition, the Director of Infection, Prevention and Control regularly attends Trust Board meetings, reporting on infection control matters.
Steve Webster, Deputy Chief Executive, said: “We are very pleased that the restrictions placed on North Bristol NHS Trust as part of the Improvement Notice have now been lifted, and that the CQC is satisfied with the extensive work that has been carried out by our staff over the last few months.
“To have received the Improvement Notice was of course very disappointing. Over the past couple of years the Trust has significantly reduced MRSA and C. difficile infections at Frenchay and Southmead. We therefore knew that infection control training was taking place but the recording systems to show it was happening were not of a sufficient standard.
“Following the Improvement Notice, the Trust declared non-compliance with several core standards that will result in us getting a ‘default’ weak rating for the quality of services when the CQC publishes its annual ratings in October.
“I am pleased to say that work is progressing extremely well on this and we expect to be compliant with all core standards later this year – with the exception for the standard around the quality of our estate which is, of course, one of the main reasons we are building the new super hospital at Southmead.”
Notes to Editors:
In lifting the restrictions, the CQC said it was satisfied that the Trust had:
- Completed an audit of training of staff by job role, location and when mandatory training was last received
- Developed an action plan addressing the training shortfalls and had made specific arrangements for the training of staff responsible for delivery of care. In addition, the Trust had given assurances that adequate resource for infection control training had been agreed to ensure the plan could be delivered
- Developed strategic objectives for infection prevention and control and has set up systems to ensure these are met and that the assurance framework encompasses the regular provision of information to the Trust Board on performance that includes results of audits against key infection control policies and training attendance monitoring.
