Agenda and minutes

The minutes of the Health Scrutiny Panel meeting held on 21 March 2023 were submitted and approved as a correct record.

Dr Hilary Lloyd, Chief Nurse and Dr Mithilesh Lal, Associate Medical Director will be in attendance to present South Tees NHS Foundation Trust’s draft Quality Account for 2022/2023.

The Health Scrutiny Panel welcomed the opportunity to consider the South Tees NHS Foundation Trust’s draft Quality Account for 2022/2023.

A formal written response, detailing the scrutiny panel’s comments and feedback, needed to be submitted to the Trust by Monday, 26 June 2023.

At the meeting, the Trust’s Chief Nurse and Associate Medical Director were in attendance to provide an outline of the priorities for improvement and the quality of services at the Trust.

The Associate Medical Director advised that, in 2019, an inspection had been conducted by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to review whether the services provided by the Trust were safe, caring, effective and responsive to people’s needs. Following the 2019 inspection, the CQC had rated the Trust as ‘Requires Improvement’. However, the scrutiny panel was advised that a more recent inspection had been undertaken in November 2022, whereby the CQC had upgraded the Trust’s rating to ‘Good’. The scrutiny panel congratulated the Trust on that significant achievement and commended the hard work, commitment and dedication of its staff.

In terms of the 2019 inspection, the Chief Nurse explained that three areas had been rated as ‘Requires Improvement’, i.e. ensuring services were ‘Safe’, ‘Effective’ and ‘Well Led’. The scrutiny panel heard that a significant amount of improvement work had been undertaken to ensure those areas were now judged as ‘Good’. Members heard that a new distribution leadership model had been implemented, which aimed to empower staff members and involve them in decision-making in respect of the management of resources and the delivery of care in the hospitals and communities. The scrutiny panel welcomed those practices that had been adopted to promote a positive culture that supported and valued staff.

The Associate Medical Director advised that more doctors, nurses and midwives had joined the Trust and recruitment remained a key focus. It was also commented that the Trust had experienced the largest national increase in the number of staff members who would recommend the organisation as a place to work.

The scrutiny panel was advised that there was a continued commitment of staff members in ensuring access to services and care. Members heard that, since 2019:

·        over 2 million outpatient appointments had taken place;

·        over a million diagnostic scans had been undertaken;

·        110,000 surgical procedures had been performed;

·        care had been delivered closer to home for more than 3 million patients; and

·        more than 0.5 million had accessed accident and emergency care facilities.

The Chief Nurse advised that the Trust’s staff teams had worked incredibly hard to improve the quality of care for all patients and the Trust was delighted that it had been upgraded to ‘Good’. It was highlighted that the Trust had become one of the first acute hospital trusts in England, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, to achieve a rating improvement to ‘Good’ from the CQC for the care delivered to patients and service users. It was commented that the staff at the Trust should feel immensely proud of that achievement.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 23/3