YORK Hospital trust has been told it must improve following an inspection which raised questions about the safety of its services.

Overall, York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has been rated as requiring improvement by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) - with inspectors raising concerns about low staffing levels and the length of time patients wait in A&E before being clinically assessed and the wait for cancer referral waiting time targets.

Inspectors flagged up chronic staffing shortages, noting that when the inspection happened earlier this year there were 98 ward-based nursing vacancies in York and Scarborough Hospitals.

It is the second high profile CQC judgement of NHS services in York, following the closure of Bootham Park Hospital last week, when inspectors raised serious concerns about the safety of patients.

However, the report does praise hospital staff for being caring and compassionate and for going the extra mile to help patients. The CQC also found the service to be effective overall.

Outlining areas for improvement, a CQC spokesperson said: "The provider was unable to consistently provide safe staffing levels across the trust. There were shortages of nursing staff on medical and some surgical wards; consultant cover within A&E; and community inpatient staff. The trust was actively trying to recruit to the majority of these roles.

"Patients were often waiting too long for treatment. The national targets for A & E, referral-to-treatment, and cancer waiting times were not being achieved. Inspectors noted that patients arriving in both A & E departments at York and Scarborough hospitals sometimes had to wait too long for a clinical assessment of their condition."

At York Hospital, inspectors expressed concern about the operation of ward 24, the winter pressures ward in York, which was often reliant on bank staff, and that the trust was not meeting its own target of 75 per cent compliance with mandatory training including safeguarding training.

It was noted 10,000 medical records were not "completely secured" at one of the trust's community locations.

Concerns were also flagged up by staff working at the trust's hospitals in Bridlington and Scarborough - integrated by the trust in recent years - that there is lack of senior leadership present on site.

York Press:

York MPs Rachael Maskell and Julian Sturdy

Responding to the inspection, York Outer MP Julian Sturdy said it was important the requirements outlined by the CQC were addressed quickly.

York Central MP Rachael Maskell said it was not a "bad report", noting the report details staff excellence and that patients receive good quality care.

She said the majority of issues related to understaffing, which is a direct result of Government failure to train enough nursing staff and has led to staffing shortages across the country.

York Press: Patrick Crowley, Chief Executive of York Hospital

Patrick Crowley, pictured, chief executive of York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The reports, without exception, rated our services as ‘Good’ for being Caring, and every single one of our staff should be proud of the CQC’s comments regarding their compassion and dedication, treating patients with dignity and respect, and of the open and honest manner in which staff approached the inspection.

“It is also great to see such positive reports on our community services only three years since they transferred to the Trust. It is a phenomenal achievement in such a short time to find these services rated as ‘Good’ across the board.

“As an overall assessment, a single rating of ‘Requires Improvement’ for the whole organisation clearly cannot reflect the range of our services or the complexity of our organisation, nor can it give a detailed insight into the quality of the services we provide.

“We are a hair’s breadth away from an overall ‘Good’ rating, with three quarters of the scores as such.

“When you look beyond the headline rating and read the reports and ratings in full, it is clear that there are many areas of excellent practice across all of our services, and these have been highlighted by the CQC."

Professor Sir Mike Richards, the chief inspector of hospitals, said: “We found a number of areas of outstanding practice across all sites with services going the extra mile to improve the support that they provided to people – it is encouraging to report that the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in York were providing much-needed inpatient support. However, we saw other services where more needed to be done to make sure that care and treatment consistently met the required standard.

“People are entitled to receive treatment and care in services which are consistently safe, effective, caring and responsive to their needs.”