Heavily criticised trust recognised for improvements on infection control

A trust which was heavily criticised for poor infection prevention and control last summer has been praised for making improvements.

East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust was served with an enforcement notice by the Care Quality Commission in August last year, citing “serious concerns” about patient safety. The trust had twice the national rate of patients infected with COVID-19 after admission to hospital.

But a new report, issued today, found significant improvements, with several areas of outstanding practice. The conditions imposed on the trust after last year’s inspection of the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford were also lifted, following the visit by the CQC in early March.

Cath Campbell, CQC’s head of hospital inspections in the South East, said the improvements were particularly commendable as the trust had been under extreme pressure as a result of the pandemic.

She said: “Leaders adopted learnings from other trusts, and from NHS Improvement which led to the development of a detailed infection prevention and control improvement plan. The trust then set up an improvement group to focus on implementing the actions in the plan and put a committee in place to review internal audit data and led improvements based on this information.

“Although there were still one or two areas for improvement which we have advised the trust to look at now, overall this is a very positive report.”

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Source: HSJ, 23 April 2021