We have been rated Outstanding by Care Quality Commission
NEWS SUMMARY:
- Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (NHFT), the county’s NHS mental health and community healthcare provider, has been rated as Outstanding following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC)
- NHFT is now the third mental health Trust in the country to receive this impressive rating and only the second to receive it as a Trust who also provide community and integrated care alongside mental health care.
- The CQC praised the Trust’s staff on embracing vision and values of the organisation as well as the strong leadership in place which has been reflected in the Well-led rating of outstanding.
DETAIL:
Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (NHFT) the county’s integrated provider of community care and mental health has been rated Outstanding overall following its recent CQC routine inspection in June this year.
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 has been rated Good for Safe, Responsive and Effective and Outstanding for Care and Well-led.
Angela Hillery, Chief executive at NHFT said: “We are absolutely over the moon with this rating, it is a true reflection of how dedicated our 4,500 staff are to providing outstanding care each and every day. We have all worked hard to be the best we can be and the journey we have taken together has enabled us to achieve our Trust’s vision of being a leading provider of outstanding, compassionate care.
“We are particularly proud of our outstanding Well-led result too. For our first CQC inspection in this area and to receive this rating is testament to the hard work of our staff and their focus on making a positive difference to the lives of our patients, service users and carers.
“Here at team NHFT we have gone from strength to strength since our original CQC inspection back in 2015 when we received Requires Improvement, to Good in January 2017 and now our Outstanding rating. I am thrilled the CQC has recognised the efforts everyone has put in for us to achieve this rating.
“Whilst we are highly delighted with our results we are always focusing on improvement. There is a need to focus on a few things highlighted by the CQC. We are of course already reviewing these and they are already part of our own ongoing action planning”
The Trust’s CQC report for the routine and well-led inspection has been published and available on the CQC website. The CQC report summarises the findings of the inspection along with a rating for each area. We are particularly pleased with the following highlights from the report:
- Staff showed caring, compassionate attitudes, proud to work for the Trust and dedicated to their roles. We were impressed by the way all staff have embraced and modelled the Trust’s values
- Impressed by the strength and depth of leadership at the Trust and displaying integrity on an ongoing basis
- The Trust has a clear vision and set of values with quality and sustainability as top priorities. The Trust benchmarked their ‘business as usual’ against the vision and values and kept the message the heart of all aspects of the running of the organisation
- Staff treated patients with kindness, dignity and respect. Consistently staff attitudes were helpful, understanding and staff used kind and supportive language which patients would understand. The style and nature of communication was kind, respectful and compassionate. Staff showed strong therapeutic relationships with their patients and clearly understood their needs
- Managers investigated incidents appropriately and shared lessons learned with staff in a number of ways. We reviewed serious incident reports and found investigations were thorough and included participation from family and carers, where appropriate
- The Trust responded in a positive way to the improvements we asked them to make following our inspection in January 2017.
Crishni Waring, chair of NHFT said: “I feel privileged to be chair of NHFT. During my time here I have had the honour of meeting many service users, carers, volunteers and staff, and of course working closely with our governors and the board of directors. I believe that the Outstanding rating is richly deserved because here at NHFT we work together as a team, focused on making a positive difference to the community we serve. I would like to sincerely thank everybody who has worked so hard to make this a possibility and I am delighted that the CQC have formally recognised NHFT as an Outstanding provider of compassionate care.”
Full details of the ratings, including a ratings grid, are given in the report published online at: https://www.cqc.org.uk/provider/RP1
Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (NHFT) provides a comprehensive range of physical, mental health and specialist services, many of which are provided in hospital, from a GP surgery, clinic, in the patient’s own homes as well as in custody and prisons.
For more information about the Trust visit: www.nhft.nhs.uk or follow us on Twitter: @nhftnhs