“Passionate for high quality care, and grounded in local community” - CQC report follows inspections of North Mid
“Kind, committed, passionate for high quality care, and grounded in local community” – North Mid staff deserve stronger and sustained cultural improvement, and time and capacity to develop
A new report published today has called out North Mid staff as demonstrating compassion and kindness, providing emotional as well as clinical support for patients, and having strong insight into the needs of our diverse local community, according to regulatory inspection visits undertaken in late 2023.
The report published by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) which is one of the NHS’s key regulators, describes the findings of teams of inspectors who visited North Mid and met with staff, patients, senior leaders and staff representatives, in visits in September and Deceember 2023.
The findings are also used to form one-phrase ratings of the Trust across key dimensions, such as leadership, and similar ratings for sections of our complex range of services. The report published today rates our medicine and urgent care services which were inspected in September last year as ‘requires improvement’, the same rating it had previously held. The Trust’s rating for the dimension of ‘well led’ fell from ‘good’ to ‘requires improvement’ – a drop of one category – with the report citing a number of areas for development, including addressing pockets of poor culture that inspectors describe as needing improvement in line with the NHS staff survey.
Since the inspectors’ visits, the full annual NHS Staff Survey results have been published showing not only that North Mid has improved over the past year on nearly three-quarters of the measures covered by the poll, but also that this makes us the most improved trust in our cohort of providers, building on year-on-year improvement of the past five years.
North Mid chief executive Dr Nnenna Osuji said:
“We are grateful to patients, families, staff and others who take time to share their feedback with regulators like the CQC, and with us directly, so that we can ensure we are focusing on the right things that our patients, staff and community tell us are important to them. This is the sixth inspection of North Mid services since I joined the Trust as chief executive in summery 2021, and I am thankful to everyone who has helped share their experiences, views, and ideas for how we can continually progress towards our vision of outstanding care for local people. Our recent staff survey results, together with our patient surveys, demonstrate we are making strides in this commitment. As the most improved trust among our provider cohort in this year’s annual staff survey, with healthy above-average response rates, we can be sure that for the majority of our staff, we are moving in the right direction.
“I am incredibly pleased – but not at all surprised – that the CQC inspectors found North Mid staff to be compassionate, dedicated, and firmly anchored in our fabulous local community. North Mid is at the heart of north London, and we are proud to employ a workforce which mirrors the talents and tenacity of our local population. The multi-faceted diversity that makes us strong also brings diversity of experience, opinions and ideas, and I want to be sure that the broad variety of views allows every voice to feel heard, particularly from people who feel seldom heard, and who are willing to ‘speak truth to power’ – some of the most meaningful changes come from courageous critics, and North Mid is open to learning from everyone.
“I am of course disappointed that our rating for ‘well-led’ has fallen from ‘good’ to ‘requires improvement’, and I, together with our leadership team and board, will continue to examine our processes and practices to improve, and to deliver further improvements for our staff, patients, and local community.
“From recent feedback, including the CQC report published today, I know also that we have some work to do in terms of improving culture among some teams and services, and we are not shying away from this responsibility. We will continue to focus on our mission to provide outstanding care to local people as well as our journey of improvement which will take time and unwavering dedication. We hope our staff, our patients, our populations, and our partners will continue to work with us to support this direction of travel.”