Hospital chief says warning notices should not be required to provoke improvement
A surprise inspection which focused on young people’s mental health is an opportunity to improve services for all ages, a hospital’s governing board has heard.
The Care Quality Commission visited Princess Royal Hospital in Telford in February, and handed the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) a six-point improvement notice.
Nursing director Hayley Flavell said it would be “very narrow minded” to only focus on children and young people in the trust’s response, because, post-lockdown, mental health problems were affecting all ages.
Chief Executive Louise Barnett agreed it was an opportunity to improve, but said “it absolutely shouldn’t take an inspection with a series of conditions and warning notices” to provoke it.
A report by Ms Flavell said the “Section 31 notice” ordered SaTH to review the records of all acute mental health inpatients under 18 and not admit any more unless.
She said these had been addressed immediately and action plans were drawn up to correct the others, including instructions to devise a system to track young patients’ location and train staff who handle them.
Ms Flavell told the trust’s board that four of the conditions were solely about SaTH and its services, but two more were “system-wide” and would require collaboration with the Midlands Partnership Foundation Trust – a trust that primarily delivers mental health services – the county’s clinical commissioning group and local government.
Broader
Chairman Catriona McMahon said: “Sometimes doing what feels right is not necessarily the right thing with regards to the best care for patients, especially children.
“As part of our broader look, I would be interested to know whether there are other things we are doing because we feel it’s the right answer, but it isn’t, it’s just easier than finding what the right answer is.
“Having the CQC tell us is not the way.”
Ms Barnett said: “What this has done, which is really positive and we need to build on in other areas, is bring us together to have more effective ways of working.
“I think that model of working will be helpful as we go forward with some other areas.
“It absolutely shouldn’t take an inspection with a series of condition and warning notices, so I’m also reviewing and overseeing some of these areas to make sure we’ve got the line of sight we need, the evidence we need, and we’re clear whether we’re progressing.”
Ms Flavell said: “There is now an opportunity to look widely at how we care for adults who attend to our emergency department with mental health issues, because I think we’d be very narrow-minded not to look further, with what’s currently happening in the population, post-lockdown.
“We’re going to see more mental health coming into the organisation, so we need to make sure what we do for children and young people isn’t just focussed on children and young people.”
