By Mark Smulian
13 January 2010
Patient care at the troubled Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust has been criticised by the Care Quality Commission.
The trust was the subject of an independent inquiry in 2009, which found that patients had been neglected and in some cases had died.
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley last year launched a formal public inquiry, which is still sitting.
The CQC’s latest intervention came in November after what it called ‘a serious incident relating to the care of twins born prematurely at the hospital’.
Inspectors looked at how the trust managed medicines; staff training and supervision; and how well the trust gathered, recorded and evaluated information about care quality.
The commission said it had highlighted these concerns before and that while the trust had made progress, this had been insufficient.
CQC regional director Andrea Gordon said: ‘The trust has systems in place to support the right patient receiving the right medicine at the right time, but the competence of staff to administer and handle medicines is not routinely checked or monitored. Therefore, we have not been assured that medicines are always managed safely in the trust.’
Trust chief executive Antony Sumara said the commission’s report took no account of plans submitted by the trust four days after inspectors visited it.
He said the trust had begun to implement these ahead of their formal evaluation by the CQC, and noted ‘new systems and processes take time to embed within any organisation’.
