Monitor secures further commitments from troubled Colchester trust to improve
Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust has agreed to make changes to improve its performance, patient experience, quality and clinical effectiveness.
Monitor, the health sector regulator, is taking action after an inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) rated Colchester as ‘requiring improvement’ overall and ‘inadequate’ against its ‘well led’ standard.
Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust has agreed with Monitor to take the following legally binding steps:
- develop and implement an Improvement Plan to address the specific concerns identified by the CQC and underlying issues
- form an Improvement Board with stakeholders including Monitor, North East Essex Clinical Commissioning Group and NHS England to oversee and review progress of the plan.
Monitor is also working with Colchester to ensure it has stable and effective leadership by scrutinising its organisational development strategy including board members.
Monitor put Colchester in special measures in November 2013, following concerns about the care provided to cancer patients. Since then, the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust has partnered Colchester to provide it with tailored support to help fix problems with its cancer services.
Adam Cayley, Regional Director at Monitor, said:
We want all patients of Colchester to receive quality care, which means all parts of the organisation must operate effectively. This action reaffirms our desire for this to happen by ensuring that the trust takes appropriate and swift action to address the concerns around how it is led. It will also reduce the likelihood of these issues happening again.
We will continue to monitor the trust rigorously, and will not hesitate to take further regulatory action if necessary.