ENGLAND’S chief hospitals inspector says the county hospitals trust requires improvement following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission.

A team of CQC inspectors visited core services at Wye Valley NHS Trust between June and July this year.

This visit looked at urgent and emergency care, surgery, outpatients, maternity, medicine and children and young people’s services.

Inspectors rated the care provided to be good regarding whether services are caring and requires improvement regarding whether services are safe, responsive, effective and well-led.

The trust’s overall rating is requires improvement and their use of resources has been deemed as inadequate.

Chief inspector Ted Baker said: “On our return to Wye Valley NHS Trust, we found a number of improvements had been made across some areas.

“However, other services had either not improved or worsened since our last inspection so there remain areas where further work is needed.

“Inspectors were particularly impressed by the improvements made in the services for children and young people which are now rated as Good overall and Outstanding for being caring.”

“There are, however, areas we remain concerned about which the trust must focus their attention on. For example, surgery services at Hereford Hospital were rated Inadequate for responsiveness overall. Patients could not access the service when they needed it and there were delays with referral to treatment time

“Increased numbers of medical and surgical emergency patients impacted on access to elective surgery and resulted in patients not being placed in the wards most suitable for them.”

Trust chief executive Glen Burley said thy thanked the CQC for its thorough and accurate report.

He said: “The inspectors’ report demonstrates we’ve made good progress in many areas within our control and we’re particularly pleased that they’ve highlighted the great work by our staff caring for children and young people which they have rated as ‘outstanding’.

“We acknowledge there’s still lots to do.”