Blackpool Victoria named as one of the worst NHS hospitals in the country
Blackpool Victoria Hospital has been labelled as one of the worst NHS Hospitals in the country by researchers.
Medical negligence specialists Patient Claim Line crunched the numbers to reveal that 49 per cent of NHS hospitals in England are currently performing below standard, being rated ‘Requires Improvement’ or ‘Inadequate’ by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
There are six NHS hospitals in England that are rated 'Inadequate', which is the lowest rating the CQC can score, and Blackpool Victoria is one of them. Writing about Blackpool Victoria Hospital’s urgent and emergency services unit, inspectors observed that “at times the department felt chaotic and we had concerns about the lack of oversight the leadership team had of the risks”.
Others making the Inadequate list are Hull Royal Infirmary, The Hillingdon Hospital, Uxbridge, The York Hospital, The Barkantine Centre, London and Corbett Hospital, Stourbridge.
Blackpool Victoria
According to the CQC website, the overall rating for Blackpool Victoria is Inadequate, which means the service is performing badly and the CQC has taken enforcement action against the provider of the service.
The latest report published on the CQC website dates from September 2022 when inspectors looked specifically at maternity care due to the concerns raised over how the service was managing with low staffing to ensure women and babies received safe care and treatment. Among concerns, they found:
- The service did not always have enough midwifery staff to care for women and keep them safe.
- There was a lack of robust systems and processes to safely store medicines within maternity services.
- Staff did not adequately support women to breastfeed.
-There were insufficient processes in place to assess the risk of and prevent and control the spread of infections.
- There were not effective systems and processes to ensure incidents were reported, reviewed, and investigated appropriately to ensure lessons were identified and shared with teams.
Positives were also noted, including that doctors, midwives and other healthcare professionals worked together as a team to benefit women, staff supported women to make informed decisions about their care, and that key services were available seven days a week to support timely care.
Following the report, an action plan was submitted by the Trust to the CQC, outlining ways to improve.
The Gazette has contacted Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust for comment.
Last year, the Trust said it was ‘determined to do better for patients and their families’ after a survey found that patient experience at A&E had worsened significantly in 2022. The 267 respondents in Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust gave the hospital emergency department an average of 6.3 out of 10 for overall experience in 2022. It was down from a score of 8.4 out of 10 when the survey was last done in 2020.