North by North West: How trusts compared on the NHS staff survey

Some of the headline staff survey results made for ugly reading for certain trusts in the North West.

But in this edition, NxNW has put together a more comprehensive analysis of the results, by benchmarking every provider in the region against their regional peers, on the nine key themes used in the survey.

By accentuating performance relative to regional peers, the analysis picks up areas of potential concern that might have been overlooked previously, for example where a trust’s score has marginally improved or deteriorated, and the majority of peers in the region have significantly improved or deteriorated.

The annual survey was conducted in October and November 2020, so the results clearly would have been affected by the response to the second wave of coronavirus. But with the whole of the North West badly affected by the pandemic, making comparisons within the region is legitimate.

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Of the trusts which have performed poorly in terms of relative year-on-year improvement / deterioration, Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care Foundation Trust was the only one to acknowledge its results were “disappointing”. All the relatively poor performers said they were working to understand their results and put measures in place to improve.

It is important to note, green/red cells in the first set of tables represent a positive/negative change relative to those of regional peers, as opposed to an absolute positive/negative change. Most of the absolute changes are small and not classed as statistically significant. 

Improvement/deterioration relative to regional peers

_{Figures in the tables above represent the change in trusts’ composite scores within the nine key themes of the staff survey in 2020, compared to 2019 (chart below shows the composite scores for 2020). Green cells represent a relative improvement against regional peers and red cells a relative deterioration. Therefore, a green cell does not necessarily represent an absolute improvement, or a red cell an absolute deterioration. Liverpool University FT is  excluded as it was recently formed by a merger so 2019 scores were not available. Only sectors with three or more trusts were benchmarked.}

New headline scores

_{Figures in the tables above display the composite scores for each trust [out of 10] within the nine key themes of the staff survey in 2020. Green cells represent a relatively positive result against regional peers and red cells a relatively negative result. Only sectors with three or more trusts were benchmarked.}

Eating disorder service overwhelmed

There have been plenty of warnings about a huge surge in demand for mental health services, due to the pandemic and national lockdown measures.

Eating disorder services are already feeling that surge, with providers in the North West seeing an unprecedented number of referrals for young people.

Lancashire and South Cumbria FT appears to be the worst affected, with referrals of under-19s reaching almost double their pre-pandemic levels over the last few months, with response times falling off a cliff.

Having consistently responded to 100 per cent urgent one-week referrals for under-19s within a week throughout last year, this slid to 79 per cent in January, 50 per cent in February, 31 per cent in March, and 43 per cent in the first half of April.

Response times at some of the region’s other providers – Pennine Care, Alder Hey, and Cheshire and Wirral Partnership – appear to have held up in the face of similar surges, which suggests the LSCFT services are particularly fragile.

It has commissioned an external review, led by Jessica Morgan, a consultant psychiatrist at Cheshire and Wirral Partnership, which is bound to point at staffing shortages and the need for additional investment, particularly in East Lancashire.

A spokeswoman for the trust said: “We are responding to an unprecedented increase in eating disorders in Lancashire and South Cumbria and meeting this demand has become challenging for our trust.

“We therefore want to review our clinical model and service structure in order to ensure that we have both the clinical pathways and capacity to sustainably meet this demand.”