Hospital urgent care requires improvement - report

Urgent and emergency care services at Scarborough Hospital have been rated as requiring improvement, following an inspection.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) said ambulance handovers were not consistently completed within the target time frame and the number of people admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours of arrival was below average.

However, they found medical care had improved since their last inspection, upgrading the service from requires improvement to good. The overall rating for the hospital remains requires improvement.

York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals Trust said it recognised the challenges raised and "continues to take action to address them".

Karen Knapton, CQC deputy director of operations in the north, said: "At this inspection, we were pleased to find a number of improvements had been made in medical care since our last visit.

"However, further improvements were needed in both medical care as well as urgent and emergency care.

"It was also disappointing that issues we highlighted at the previous inspection, still hadn't been addressed and new breaches were found."

In medical care, she said "more work" was needed to improve delays for people waiting for some specialist treatment, particularly for cardiology and respiratory conditions.

However, she added that there had been "sustained improvements" in how staff were completing risk assessments and escalating risks appropriately to keep people safe.

In urgent and emergency care she said only 62% of patients were admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours of arrival.

Meanwhile, inspectors found only 40% of ambulance handovers were completed within 15 minutes, compared with the national average of 65%, though flagged that staff were "working hard to try and see people in a timely way".

Knapton said despite the concerns people told inspectors there were being treated with "kindness, empathy and compassion" in both departments and "staff interactions with people and those close to them were consistently warm and respectful".

"We have told the trust where it needs to make the necessary improvements and will continue to monitor both services to ensure people stay safe while this happens," she added.

Dr Karen Stone, the trust's medical director, said they welcomed the report and were "pleased it recognises the improvements we've made".

She added: "The report also clearly sets out where we must continue to improve.

"We acknowledge the pressures our teams are working under, particularly within urgent and emergency care, where access, patient flow and ambulance handover performance must improve, and in medical care where some patients have experienced delays in accessing specialist support.

"We continue to take action across all areas highlighted, including strengthening training compliance, workforce capacity, infection prevention and control, medicines and environmental safety, and how we monitor and support patients while they are waiting."

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