Our CQC rating

Providing high quality care for patients is our top priority and underpins everything we do here at Pennine Care, but it’s important that we can demonstrate this at any time, to anyone.

 

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is responsible for ensuring that providers are meeting fundamental standards of care. They assess this as part of a planned visit involving up to 120 external inspectors working across a whole trust, or an unannounced visit involving a smaller team of inspectors looking at a particular service.  

CQC inspection teams include clinical professionals and other experts, such as people with experience of receiving care. They take an in-depth look at everything a trust or service does and all staff need to be able to answer their questions clearly and demonstrate supportive evidence.

An inspection should build on what we are doing already and provides us with an opportunity to showcase our good work, areas and actions for improvement, how we involve and listen to patients and how we learn from mistakes.

Based on their findings, the CQC will rate the Trust as ‘outstanding’, ‘good’, ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’.

Pennine Care has a good track record of quality and is placed within the CQC’s lowest rate of concern, but we mustn’t become complacent and need to monitor our effectiveness continuously.

Our inspection

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspected our Trust between 18 and 27 September 2018, visiting a cross-section of our community and mental health services.

They spoke to our staff about how their service is performing under the five key domains, asked to see documentation and observed the care that is delivered. They also spoke to service users about their experiences of care and gathered feedback from a range of other key stakeholders, such as parents, carers and partners.

Our rating

Our overall CQC inspection outcome is ‘requires improvement’.  Within the five key domains, our ratings are:

  • Caring: Good
  • Responsive: Good
  • Safe: Requires improvement
  • Effective: Requires improvement
  • Well-led: Requires improvement

To further break down our overall rating:

  • One service rated as ‘outstanding’, ten rated as ‘good’, and six rated as ‘requires improvement’ overall
  • No services rated were as ‘inadequate’

Clare Parker is our executive director of nursing, healthcare professionals and quality governance and senior lead for the inspection.  She said: “While the ratings have not changed since our last inspection in 2016, this report feels very different.

“It recognises the significant improvement we have made in many in areas and that we are on a positive journey towards achieving a ‘good’ outcome.  Of course, our ultimate aim is to be outstanding and we’re committed to achieving this as soon as possible.”

“We are delighted that our mental health older people’s wards have improved their rating to good and that our dental services, which were inspected for the first time, were also rated as good.

“We are also proud that our caring staff have been acknowledged with a ‘good’ rating. This is testament to their compassion and dedication to patients.

“We are also very encouraged by the recognition of positive changes around our culture and our clear commitment to improving quality.

“We will continue to focus on areas for improvement, including making sure all records are up to date, and a stronger focus on equality and diversity.

We will now work with our staff and the CQC to develop an action plan, so that the required improvements can be made as quickly as possible.