.jpg) Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust has blasted claims by the BBC that it “failed” on core standards when its self assessments were double-checked.
A BBC Panorama investigation revealed on Monday (March 8) that spot checks by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) had found 60% of hospitals in England were not accurately assessing their performance.
A report on the BBC's website went on to claim that when just four of the 44 'core standards' in assessments from 28 hospitals in 2009 were double-checked, Southport and Ormskirk “failed in three of the four areas checked.
The only other hospital to fail in three standards was Peterborough, meanwhile six were wrong in two out of the four standards and nine got their assessment wrong in one of the four standards.
A spokesman for Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust told The Champion: "The article on the BBC website entitled 'Spot-checks reveal mistakes when hospitals self-certify' is somewhat misleading.
“In the annual Healthcheck in 2009 the CQC rated the trust as good. The only criticism we received from the CQC did not impact on direct patient care.
"The BBC claims that Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust 'failed' in 3 out of 4 core areas. This is not correct in two ways; first, there are 44 core standards, not four. Second, we did not 'fail'. The Care Quality Commission did not agree with our assessment and said we had not met the requirements. We did meet the requirements of the other 41 of the 44 core standards.
"In all three of the core standards where the CQC did not agree with our assessment, the reasons were to do with our recording of what we had done and the processes in place to measure them. It was not a criticism of what we had actually achieved and was not connected to direct patient care.
"The BBC list 17 hospitals where there were 'inspection failures' and it implies we are worse that 15 of these hospitals. In fact when the overall rating given by the CQC is looked at, we are better than 13 of the hospitals and equal with three."
By Natasha Young |
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