CQC Inspection result - Good | News

I’m delighted to let you know that following a CQC inspection last year of our nine acute wards for adults of working age and our two psychiatric intensive care units in Camden and Islington, the service has gone from ‘Requires Improvement’ to ‘Good’. 

Congratulations to our divisional team and front line staff for all their hard work and for everything they do every single day to give the best possible care to our service users and their families. This was reflected in the CQC rating the service ‘Good’ for being effective, caring, responsive to people’s needs and well-led. Thanks, too, to our Chief Nurse, Amanda Pithouse, and her team for their support in getting ready for the visit.

The CQC’s many positive findings include that our service treats people with compassion and kindness, respecting their privacy and dignity, and understanding their individual needs. The report also found that staff managed risk well, minimising the use of restrictive practices, and that teams had access to the full range of specialists required to meet people’s needs. They understood the individual needs of patients and actively involved them, and their families and carers in care decisions. The service was well-led and the governance processes ensured that ward procedures ran smoothly. 

Like many NHS trusts, the report reported that the service faced pressure due to not having enough permanent nurses and that we must develop strategies to reduce the impact this may have on people’s care. This is something we are closely focused on, across C&I and BEH, with a number of initiatives to help recruit new staff and retain more of our existing committed staff, but, as we all know, this is a national challenge across the NHS at the moment.

We will continue to study the report’s findings in detail over the coming days to address the areas still needing work, and will work collaboratively with the Hospital division and corporate teams to develop an improvement plan - but a very well done to all in the meantime! You can read the report in full here. 

Best wishes,

Jinjer Kandola MBE 
Chief Executive