The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has published findings from 18 pilot hospital inspections completed last year. This concluded that compassionate care is alive and well in the NHS.
Inspectors found care and compassion among frontline staff in every hospital visited, as well as a strong commitment to the NHS and observed much good practice. Critical care services were found to be delivering high quality, compassionate care and were able to demonstrate how they monitored quality.
Maternity services were also generally found to be providing good quality care, and were good at monitoring their effectiveness. Almost all units were using a performance dashboard that helped them understand their performance. Many of the Trusts were also found to be making a determined effort to improve care for people with dementia, for example by creating dedicated wards.
However, inspectors did find significant variation in quality between Trusts and even between services within Trusts. Accident and Emergency Departments (A&E) were found to be under greater strain than other hospital services and some have not adapted to increased volumes of patients, which is leading to overcrowding, long waiting times and staff shortages at times.
Outpatient services were found to be not responding well to patient needs across most of the hospitals inspected, with patients waiting unacceptably long times to be seen and some clinics being overcrowded as a result.
The report also found that apart from critical care and maternity, most services cannot demonstrate whether they are delivering effective care or not.
