A LOCAL hospital has been given a clean bill of health.
A warning notice over concerns about staffing in the maternity units at Dewsbury and District Hospital has been lifted.
Officials of the Care Quality Commission (CQC), which inspects hospitals around the country, yesterday announced that the warning notice on maternity services has been lifted.
The notice, served in February, focused on staffing the service.
Inspectors who had visited some months ago had recorded “chaotic” scenes in the unit and expressed concerns about the level of staffing.
They said that expectant mums in labour had been left waiting for up to several hours.
And many of them had not been given the one-to-one care that was accepted as the standard.
Stephen Eames, interim chief executive at the Mid Yorkshire NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, said: “We made a promise to parents-to-be and local people that we’d address the areas that needed improving – and that’s what we’ve done.
“Our teams quickly acted with targeted action and can now better respond to high levels of demand in the service.
“All staff are aware of the processes that are in place to address any short staffing issues.
“We’re pleased that the warning notice has now been lifted.”
The CQC revisited the Trust on April 10 and confirmed there were qualified, skilled and experienced staff to meet people’s needs.
In addition, they noted that improvements had been made to internal procedures used by the Trust to monitor the quality of service being provided to patients.
During the course of the inspection, the CQC did identify some areas for improvement in relation to communications with and about patients.
Tracey McErlain-Burns, chief nurse and director of patient experience at the Trust, said: “We will make the further changes necessary and are already implementing plans to improve communications with and about our patients.
“We will work with the CQC to make sure that our patients continue to receive safe, high quality maternity care.”
