Quality

nurse and service user

Quality

Quality and safety are at the foundation of all we do. They form the basis for our Trust strategy and our focus on providing high quality, safe care in all parts of the organisation.

We:

  • Are recognised as having a positive culture of safety, openness, transparency and incident reporting by our peers in the NHS Learning from mistakes league
  • Invest in and embed regulatory requirements across the Trust
  • Provide opportunities for Board to floor programmes, Governor visits, peer review and service user involvement to ensure transparency and quality  
  • Identify and manage risks to the quality of care
  • Focus on bringing together activity, embedding good practice and learning from lessons.

Our services are registered and regulated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (OFSTED) for our Short Breaks Services. To maintain registration, we must meet and maintain the standards set by the regulators.

CARE QUALITY COMMISSION

You can submit your feedback on care by clicking this link.

Our CQC Report, August 2018

Following a CQC routine inspection in June 2018 the Trust was rated Outstanding.

NHFT also received its first well-led inspection from the CQC, examining the quality of the leadership and management of the Trust, and has been rated Outstanding in this area too.

The CQC conducted the routine inspection and well-led inspection through their new procedural and investigative processes which were introduced nationwide at the beginning of the year. The new process still continues to use the five areas of inspection: Care, Responsive, Safe, Effective and Well-led.  The Trust was rated Good for Safe, Responsive and Effective, and Outstanding for Care and Well-led.

Our CQC Report, December 2019

In 2019 NHFT was once again rated Outstanding overall. The Trust again was rated Good for Safe, Responsive and Effective, and Outstanding for Care and Well-led. 

You can read the full 2019 report by clicking here. 

Quality account

Our Quality Account describes our performance and progress with meeting our priorities for quality improvements at Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. You can find more information by reading our full Quality Account, within our NHFT Annual Report and Accounts 2019-20[pdf] 6MB

Safe staffing

All Trusts with inpatient areas are required to publish information about the number of nursing, midwifery and care staff working on each ward, together with the percentage of shifts meeting safe staffing guidelines.
NHS England and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) have issued joint guidance on the ‘Hard Truths’ commitments regarding nursing, midwifery and care staff capacity and capability. The ‘Hard Truths’ commitments represent the government’s response to the Francis Report (2013) into the poor care identified at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.

The key priorities from the ‘Hard Truths’ for Trusts are to provide:

  • A six-monthly board report describing the staffing capacity and capability, following an establishment review, using evidence-based tools where possible
  • To display information at ward level about the nurses, midwives and care staff deployed for each shift compared to what has been planned
  • A monthly board report containing details of planned and actual staffing levels on a shift-by-shift basis at ward level for the previous month
  • The monthly report must also be published on the Trust’s website. We are expected to link or upload the report to the Trust’s webpage on NHS Choices.

At NHFT, we take the care of our patients very seriously and already have a number of mechanisms in place to ensure that our wards are safely staffed. Each month, we will publish information about our staffing levels and provide links to papers discussed in public at our Trust board meetings.

For further information on safe staffing please contact the Safe Staffing Team: SafeStaffing@nhft.nhs.uk