CQC publishes report following inspection at St George’s
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has published its findings from inspections at St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust last winter.
The independent regulator of health and social care in England has confirmed our services are rated “Requires Improvement”. The full report will be published on the CQC website in the coming days.
A spokesperson for St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said:
“We’re pleased the CQC has recognised improvements in some areas, including maternity care, and that patients had positive feedback about our hardworking staff during a busy winter – but we know we need to do more.
“We’ve since made many significant changes such as doubling our Same Day Emergency Care service to reduce Emergency Department waiting times and having more staff to triage patients in maternity and will continue making improvements to provide the best care for our patients.”
Other significant improvements in recognition of the concerns raised by the CQC include:
- Improving processes for reporting where things have not gone to plan, and ensuring learnings are taken forward so they do not happen again
- Introducing new systems around how we assess patients coming to our emergency department
- Putting in place a “full capacity protocol” to reduce overcrowding and corridor care in our emergency department, and implementing a self booking-in system to reduce streaming waiting times
- Strengthening monitoring of our newest maternity patients
- Strengthening local leadership in maternity, to include a new governance lead to oversee systems, processes and policies
- Making sure the correct checks are performed in a consistent way for surgery, and ensuring there is culture of learning in which there is protected time to review when things didn’t go to plan
- Sharing learnings in surgery to ensure similar incidents do not happen again
The report also recognises feedback from patients and service users – with maternity staff described as “very professional and kind” and “lovely”, and emergency care staff praised for treating patients with warmth and kindness and providing effective care and treatment during a very busy time.
Inspections for maternity took place in October 2024, urgent and emergency services in November 2024, and surgery at St George’s and at Queen Mary’s Hospital in January 2025.
