Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital has improved - but is still only "fair"

HEALTH watchdogs said the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust is performing better than at any point over the last four years - gaining top marks in public health, management and standards of care.
For the past three years, the trust, which runs the hospital in Brockley Hill, Stanmore, was judged to be 'weak' - the worst of four categories possible - in its financial management and the same level, or only one grade higher, 'fair', in the quality of services it provides.
Twelve months on, and the Care Quality Commission has bumped up the trust's rating one level to 'fair' in both areas after saying the trust "performed adequately".
Under 'quality of services', the trust satisfied all but four of the 44 nationally set benchmarks.
It failed to:
n comply with statutory guidelines to protect children;
n properly obtain consent for contacting patients and to use confidential patient information;
n provide a safe and secure surroundings, and
n have a clean and well designed environment.
When the commission's inspectors compared the trust's performance against long-standing Department of Health targets, they found only one problem - there were too many cancelled operations and too few patient being admitted within a 28-day time frame.
Meanwhile, the trust met six of eight national priorities, underachieving on the 18 week referral-to-treatment target and the four-week cancer diagnosis-to-treatment target.
Trust chief executive Rob Hurd said: "It's important to acknowledge the dedication, hard work and commitment of the staff, which has undoubtedly led to this overall improvement of our scores.
"The trust has managed to maintain the low infection rates that it is renowned for.
"The lack of a decision on whether the Stanmore site will be redeveloped has meant that the trust was unable to meet required standards on estates which has affected our overall rating."