Women’s service at Northampton mental health hospital rated ‘inadequate’ by care commissioner

A specialist mental health hospital in Northampton has been rated ‘inadequate’ for its women’s service.

St Andrew’s Hospital was inspected for the specific service by the Care Quality Commision (CQC) in February and March.

The latest service inspection results, which have been published by the commissioner today (June 10), come a few months after the Billing Road hospital's child and adolescence service was also rated ‘inadequate’ at the start of the year.The women's service was rated 'inadequate' after performing poorly in the ‘caring’ and ‘safe’ categories.

In the ‘effective’ and ‘well-led’ categories, the service was labelled ‘requires improvement’ and the service received a ‘good’ grading for the ‘responsive’ category.

According to inspectors, staffing levels, incident reporting and enhanced patient observations were particular areas of concern.

Deputy chief inspector for hospitals, Dr Kevin Cleary, said: “Our inspection of St Andrew’s Healthcare Women’s Service in Northampton highlighted several areas where the service needed to improve, and we gave feedback of our findings to the leadership team immediately following the inspection.

“Our particular concerns related to staffing levels, incident reporting and the completion of enhanced observations of patients.

“The inspection team highlighted to the service that these areas needed to be prioritised.

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, CQC’s immediate focus is on supporting providers to keep people safe during a period of unprecedented pressure.”

In response to the latest CQC results, the hospital pointed out a number of changes that have been implemented since the start of the year, including an internal restructure and the appointment of five new non-executive directors.A spokeswoman for St Andrew’s said: “Prior to the CQC inspection we had already taken the decision to remodel our women’s unit and reduce the number of beds in this service as we aim to continuously improve care for our patients and focus more on care on the community.

“We’re pleased the CQC recognised in its report the positive steps being made by the senior leadership team to change the culture of the organisation, but we understand that this is not something which can happen overnight especially in a complex mental health setting.

“We recognise that there are challenges which arose in the report and we are working hard to address these swiftly, for example, since the CQC inspection took place in February we’ve seen seclusion and restraint rates fall across the service.

“We’re confident that the changes we’re making will bring about sustainable and positive change to this service.”

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