"Our staff are determined to improve our services for patients. Inspectors did also find that people using the service were treated with compassion and kindness by staff at the QEQM.Įxclusive What's changed 100 days since damning report into East Kent maternity services? The CQC also criticised the fact that expressed milk was stored in unlocked fridges.
They also praised the hospital’s bereavement service.Īt the QEQM Hospital, inspectors found there wasn’t a system for controlling who exited the maternity unit, posing a potential security risk. "This could potentially result in delays in vital care and treatment for newborns, as well as separation from the mother and an increase in the potential for babies to be mis-identified."īoth affected hospitals have had conditions imposed on them by the health watchdog to try to bring about improvements.Įxplaining why the services have been downgraded from "requires improvement" to "inadequate", the CQC reports highlight a long list of issues.Īt the William Harvey Hospital maternity unit, CQC inspectors found that staff did not always ensure a second opinion was sought discharge delays were not monitored triage and day care facilities were poor doors in the labour ward would not close automatically in the event of a fire and the exit route through the labour ward was cluttered as a result of a lack of storage on the ward.īut inspectors did say the breastfeeding support team provided a good service. "Babies needing emergency resuscitation were taken to a resuscitaire device – however in some cases these were outside the labour room and in the corridor. "In particular we identified concerns around the use of resuscitation equipment at both hospitals we inspected. "That is why we have used our urgent enforcement powers to require immediate improvements. "Yet despite this we still found concerns and it is extremely disappointing that this latest inspection found a further decline in the quality of care people were receiving.
The CQC's director of operations, Deanna Westwood, said: "Over the last few years we have monitored the maternity services at East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust closely, and where we have found action is needed this has been made clear so that the trust knows exactly where it must make improvements. Here we are now, all those years later, and with all the help that has gone into supporting this trust, things have got worse not better." Helen Gittos, who lost her newborn daughter Harriet at the QEQM in 2014, described the findings as "thoroughly damning". The CQC imposed a raft of urgent conditions on the two maternity units earlier this year.
The trust was the focus of an independent inquiry which concluded last year that at least 45 babies died needlessly because of substandard care.ĭr Bill Kirkup's highly-critical report into maternity care in East Kent over more than a decade. The Care Quality Commission report follows unannounced inspections in January of the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford and the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (QEQM) Hospital in Margate.Įast Kent Hospitals NHS Trust says that staff are "determined to improve services for patients" and that a number of changes have already been made. Inspectors found that vital resuscitation equipment wasn't always easily accessible, day care facilities were "poor" and "chaotic", while some fire exit doors weren’t working properly.
The East Kent Hospitals NHS Trust has had its maternity services downgraded to "inadequate" with the health watchdog saying the quality of care has got worse. ITV News understands the health watchdog considered shutting the unit at the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford following the damning inspection. The CQC considered shutting the maternity unit at a Kent hospital, run by an NHS trust at the centre of a baby deaths scandal.
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