Imperial College Healthcare's maternity services continue to be rated as outstanding
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust's maternity services continue to be rated as outstanding, following Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspections in March 2023 which have been published today. The ratings cover both the Trust’s NHS and private maternity services.
The inspections took place at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea and St Mary's hospitals, as part of the CQC’s national maternity services inspection programme. This programme will provide an up-to-date view of the quality of hospital maternity care across the country, and a better understanding of what is working well to support learning and improvement.
Following this focused inspection, the overall rating for the maternity services at both Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea and St Mary's hospitals remains as outstanding overall, and good for how well-led and safe the services are. This is the same rating that the CQC gave the Trust’s maternity services in 2019, when the last inspection took place.
As this was a focused inspection, the CQC didn’t look at the other domains, which means that the existing rating for effective remains as good. The ratings for caring and responsive remain outstanding.
While some areas for improvement were identified, inspectors found:
- Staff worked well together for the benefit of people using services.
- Staff were focused on the needs of people receiving care.
- Staff engaged well with the community to plan and manage services so that people could access the service when they needed it and did not have to wait too long for treatment.
- Leaders had acted to provide sufficient staffing to ensure safe care for people using the service.
The overall rating for Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital is unchanged by this inspection and remains outstanding. The overall ratings for St Mary’s Hospital and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust are also unchanged and remain requires improvement.
Professor Tim Orchard, chief executive of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, said:
"I'm delighted that our maternity services continue to be rated as outstanding, following this recent inspection. This is testament to the hard work and commitment of our staff, who should be very proud.
"I'm particularly pleased that the inspectors highlighted how staff work well together, the importance we place on engaging with our community and, most of all, how we are focused on the needs of patients.
“There is of course much work still to do as we continue on our journey to becoming the Trust we want to be - and know we can be. We are grateful for the CQC’s feedback and are making improvements to our services, including further embedding changes to triage procedures and guidelines, introducing a daily checklist for matrons and undertaking regular reviews of our day-to-day work.
"This continues to be a very challenging time for the NHS and for our staff. I am incredibly grateful to our teams who continue to go above and beyond every day to provide high quality care for our patients."
Read the full reports for Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea and St Mary's hospitals on the CQC website.
