Wait times at Derriford Hospital's emergency department still 'too long', CQC reports
Derriford Hospital's emergency department is still experiencing overcrowding and long delays, the healthcare watchdog has warned.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspected the department unannounced in March and issued a warning notice for bosses to make "rapid and widespread improvements" to fix overcrowding and ambulance handover times, before July.
Following a recent re-inspection, the CQC said while the hospital's emergency services are now better they still "require improvement."
The overall rating for the University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust and Derriford Hospital remains "requires improvement." The CQC says it will continue to monitor standards.
University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust says that during the CQC inspection in March it was experiencing an internal critical incident and that staff are doing all they can to ensure patient safety.
CQC report
After releasing the most recent report, following re-inspection, Catherine Campbell, CQC's deputy director of operations in the south, said: “On previous inspections we had highlighted the pressures at Derriford Hospital being mainly due to limited availability of social care beds and community care, which impacted on the number of medically fit people able to be discharged.
"That hindered flow throughout the hospital, causing people to experience long delays.
“During this inspection we found people were still experiencing long waits in ambulances and the emergency department waiting room was still overcrowded.
"This included people experiencing long waits to be triaged, treated or discharged. One person’s relative was told there may be a 48 hour wait for their loved one to be admitted to hospital.
“However, some told us they had been assessed and treated relatively quickly. People gave positive feedback about staff, describing them as brilliant and lovely.
"This doesn’t alter the fact that in October 2021, we highlighted the same problems to the trust’s leadership and local stakeholders."
It added: “The new leadership team were building relationships internally and externally with local stakeholders, ambulance services and GPs. Weekly meetings with the ambulance service had helped to jointly manage the high numbers of people arriving by ambulance.
“We will continue to monitor the trust, including through future inspections, to ensure the necessary improvements are made so people can receive safe and appropriate care.”
Response from University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust
A statement from the trust responds: "Staff at University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust have made considerable improvements for patients arriving as emergencies following a CQC inspection, but they know there is more to do.
"Inspectors visited back in March of this year and have just published their report which has been delayed due to IT issues at the CQC.
"They carried out an inspection of Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC), Same Day Emergency Care and the Discharge Lounge, over two days.
"At the time, the CQC arrived during an internal Critical Incident and saw the reality of a crowded busy Emergency Department with significant numbers of ambulances waiting, speaking to both staff, patients and partner organisations."
Interim Chief Executive Mark Hackett added: “At the time, we know the quality and speed of care we were able to offer patients coming for Urgent and Emergency Care was not what we aspire it to be when the CQC inspected our services back in early March.
"They arrived during an internal Critical Incident and what they saw was fairly reflected in their report, but that was eight months ago now and we have made good progress in improving our performance since then.
"Our staff are doing all they can to ensure the safety of patients at all times – we know there is still work to do but it is important to reflect the improvements we have made since the inspection, which are many."
A new model of care has now been introduced to tackle issues raised by the CQC.
Jo Beer, the chief operating officer of University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust, added: "What we're seeing with the new model of care is that actually when we do have those periods where we have high levels of demand, really sick patients, we are recovering much quicker.
"So instead of one to two weeks to get ourselves back into shape, it's one to three days, one to two days sometimes."
Commenting on the report, Fred Thomas, MP for Plymouth Moor View, said: “This report highlights why I am campaigning so hard for a new A&E department at Derriford. We need it."
He added: "Today’s CQC report shows the cost of these broken promises. I will continue working with staff at Derriford to campaign for a new A&E.”