Kettering General Hospital Foundation Trust has achieved an Excellent rating for use of resources and a Good rating for quality of services in the Care Quality Commission’s 2009 Annual Health Check.
This is an improvement from good to excellent for the for the hospital’s use of resources compared to 2008 but a reduction in rating from excellent to good for quality of service. This reduction relates to a single part of the health check, as explained below, and does not reflect on the many improvements that are currently underway.
Kettering General Hospital’s Chief Executive, Dr Mark Newbold, said: “These are very pleasing results indeed which reflect how much we have improved as a hospital in recent years.
“We are pleased to have improved our rating on use of resources from good to excellent, which means that we have a good control of our finances.
“This has been very important for the hospital. For the last four years we have made a surplus while at the same time investing in improvements at the hospital such as our £18m Treatment Centre, £4.7m Cardiac Centre, our £1.5m new short-stay medical ward (Clifford Ward) and more recently our £4.7m improvements for the Harrowden medical ward floor and our £500,000 improvements to the Medical Assessment Unit.
“People who have visited the hospital, or been a patient here recently, will have seen significant improvements in the hospital’s services thanks to all this work – which we have managed to do because we have made a surplus.
“The reason we have slipped from excellent to good in the quality of services category is because in order to get excellent you have to pass every single part of the Annual Health Check process at the time it is being assessed.
“On April 3, 2009, we had a condition attached to our initial registration with the Care Quality Commission because visits by their inspectors had found an issue with how we document cleaning routines in the hospital.
“We immediately addressed the issue raised and on May 14 the CQC lifted the condition. We also received an unannounced visit by the commission on August 26 and passed all 16 measures assessed relating to hygiene.
“We came very close to achieving the coveted ‘double excellent’ rating and we will now continue to work hard at improving the way we deliver care and services.
“At our Annual General Meeting on September 7 we announced the launch of our Improving Healthcare Together programme which is a concerted effort to improve the experience of care at the hospital at all levels.
“Our front-line staff are being given the power to make the changes to care which patients are recommending to us and we feel that this will help us to further substantially improve our quality of care over the next year.”
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