Maternity care very different, trust boss says

The chairman of an NHS trust that has been removed from special measures after eight years has said the organisation's maternity services are "very different."

The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) was placed into special measures in November 2018, following a high-profile maternity care scandal and concerns regarding emergency care.

SaTH runs the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford, covering about half a million people in Shropshire and parts of Wales.

Chairman Andrew Morgan said that whilst the organisation "can't put right the things that went on in the past", it was "committed" to making maternity services "the very best."

The update comes after a review from NHS England, which, according to SaTH "recognised the trust has delivered significant, sustained, and demonstrable improvements", allowing it to exit special measures.

The trust was first rated inadequate after an inspection in 2018.

A report from the Care Quality Commission found the safety of maternity services and urgent and emergency care to be inadequate and said medical care, critical care and end of life care needed improvement.

Inspectors also found the leadership of the hospitals at the time to be inadequate and found improvements which needed to be made in the trust's responsiveness.

In 2022 a final report into maternity services at the trust, led by senior midwife Donna Ockenden, found catastrophic failures may have led to the deaths of more than 200 babies, nine mothers and left other infants with life-changing injuries.

Morgan said the trust had made improvements on a "number of fronts" including performance, money, culture, and "how we run the organisation."

"We've got great people, and what we've done is organised them properly," he said.

Morgan pointed to reduced waiting times for diagnostics and elective surgery as aspects that had "significantly improved" in recent years.

"Those things are the things that matter to people day-in, day-out," he said.

Families affected by maternity care failings would see "improved ratings," Morgan said, pointing to the most recent CQC report that found maternity services to be "good."

"We have implemented all of the recommendations in Donna Ockenden's report," he added, noting that this was currently being audited so that the trust was "not accused of marking our own homework."

"It is a very, very different service now."

Morgan, who was not employed by SaTH at the time of the maternity scandal, said he was "genuinely and truly horrified by what happened," adding that the trust was "sorry for the pain and harm we caused through our own failings."

SaTH was now "committed to making our service the very best you can find", Morgan said.

"I'm confident it is now a better service," he continued, adding that the trust was working with families who took part in the Ockenden Report as well as current users of maternity services.

The aim, Morgan said, was to give families "the high quality service that they have every right to expect from us".

Urgent care, too, was found to be inadequate eight years ago.

Pervading issues included waiting times for ambulances and long stretches in accident and emergency, which Morgan described as "unfinished business."

The trust's expanded emergency department at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital is currently under construction, which Morgan referred to as a "£300m investment in our services".

He added that whilst the trust was "better than we were," there was still "a long way to go."

Asked if he felt that the public was confident in SaTH, Morgan said it was "hard to speak for every single individual in the county."

However, he noted that on social media he saw "far more positive comments than we used to."

"On occasion, we get some things wrong - and when we do that we hold our hands up," Morgan added.

"What we have done differently is actively engage the public... and listen to our own workforce."

"Harnessing all of that has helped get us to where we now find ourselves."

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