Sherwood Forest trust told to focus on quality over Monitor requirements

The review panel for the trust higlighted an absence of a strong strategic direction, saying that the trust had no “clinical or nursing strategy”. This was confirmed by a number of nurses interviewed who stated that if felt like “wards worked in silos and no one had an effective umbrella role across the trust”.

The review also expressed concerns over the number of patient moves and outliers, those placed away from where they are meant to be, within the trust. It suggested that all patients should be risk assessed prior to being moved or transferred, and the bed base should be remodelled.

• Full coverage of the Keogh review

Some of the other recommendation included a review of current nurse staffing levels; adequate support for junior staff and a possible partnering with Nottingham University Hospitals Trust.

Chief executive Paul O’Connor, responding, said: “We were pleased that the national review team confirmed that there was no evidence of patient harm at our hospitals.

“However, we strive to provide good quality services to the many thousands of patients who use our hospitals each and every day, and that is why we will be responding to all of the recommendations contained in the report.  We already had some actions in progress at the time of the review visit and we will now be taking whatever further actions are necessary to enable us to continue to improve our services.”

Sherwood Forest Hospitals Foundation Trust has an overall HSMR of 116 for the period January 2012 to December 2012. It also had five high mortality alerts for diagnostic groups since 2007.