Action on scandal-hit health trust
Action will be taken to force a scandal-hit health trust to improve, despite the chief executive's confidence that things are getting better.
Inspectors for the Care Quality Commission (CQC) found blood-splattered equipment and soiled mattresses at Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
The trust's unusually high death rate among patients has already provoked concern from the organisation Dr Foster and the Patients Association last night called on its board to resign.
The CQC asked the regulator of foundation trusts, Monitor, to take action amid concerns that "improvements are simply not happening fast enough". Chief executive Cynthia Bower said the trust had taken its concerns seriously but added: "Our confidence in the management's ability to deliver on commitments and to turn the situation around has been severely dented."
Dr William Moyes, Monitor's executive chairman, said it was using its powers to demand immediate action to ensure "the delivery of rapid improvement of services".
Improvements in patient care had been "too slow to date" he said adding Monitor was concerned about the effectiveness of the trust's board. "We will be reviewing the trust's performance regularly and in detail - if we don't see measurable results quickly, we'll take further action."
The action came despite chief executive Alan Whittle's confidence that the trust will meet its improvement deadline on Monday. "I am confident the actions we, and our cleaning contractor, are taking will return us to compliance by November 30," he said.
Inspectors from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) visited the trust on October 8 and found blood-splattered equipment, blood stains on floors and curtains and badly soiled mattresses in the A&E department. Yet in the same month that the CQC issued the trust with a warning over poor standards, it also rated it as "good" on quality of service and "excellent" for its financial management in its 2008/09 assessment.
The CQC gave the trust 13 out of 14 for cleanliness, seven out of eight for standards of care and five out of five for keeping the public healthy. The trust - which runs Basildon University Hospital and Orsett Hospital - has had foundation trust status, a supposed marker of excellence, since 2004.
Katherine Murphy, director of the Patients Association, said: "Yet again the regulators' assessment of a hospital has proven to be farcical. It is nothing but a tick-box exercise that didn't reveal any of these problems. The board should most certainly resign - I would say the entire board."
