Hospital bosses in York say they have been acting quickly since CQC inspectors visited late last year to introduce improvements.

They say that not only York Hospital but Scarborough too will soon have state-of-the-art new A&E facilities, which will 'not only vastly improve the environment, but also enable the new acute care model to be adopted which will reduce delays, speed up assessment and better support the flow of patients through the hospital'.

They say A&E staff in York in particular were working in 'much-reduced temporary facilities at the time of the inspections' because of work to upgrade the A&E department.

Other improvements introduced since the most recent inspection late last year, they say, include:

- Key leadership changes both at board level and in the way services are structured and managed.

- a digital documentation system rolled out to all adult wards for recording assessments on admission, giving increased oversight of risk assessments and freeing up nursing time

- a 'badgernet' system introduced in maternity to move away from paper records and improve records and risk assessments.

- 'significant international recruitment of nurses, midwives and allied health professionals', with a lot of work done to welcome staff from overseas into the organisation, including cultural awareness weeks.

- a nursing establishment review completed- - plans developed for the recruitment and training of scrub nurses for maternity theatres - a 'comprehensive maternity improvement programme' to 'drive forward the actions identified by the CQC'.

Dr Karen Stone, the medical director of the York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We continue to work with the CQC to address their recommendations and have plans to focus on the key priority areas where we know we need to continue to make sustained improvements."