CQC criticises emergency care and leadership at Morecambe Bay

The Care Quality Commission published a report into failings in emergency care at the trust on Friday. It has been the subject of repeated questions about service quality in recent months, focusing on maternity care.

The CQC’s investigation into A&E and other urgent care services at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary and Furness General Hospital found people were waiting too long to be seen, there were too few staff on duty, inadequate monitoring of patients, unnecessary delays to discharges, and patients put in mixed sex or unsuitable wards.

The in-depth evaluation – carried out from January to March this year – found a “lack of leadership” and “apparent dislocation between senior managers and senior clinicians” meant poor quality care was not being tackled.

The CQQ found “little evidence of the trust working together to drive change and improvements in care” and limited collaboration between the two hospitals.

It also identified “an apparent ‘shared helplessness’ among staff with little ownership by emergency department staff of the current system of patient management”.

“It was also evident that key decisions related to patient care within the emergency care pathway had been made without consultation with the emergency department senior management team,” said the report.

The foundation trust’s chair Sir David Henshaw, who joined earlier this year, responded in a statement. He apologies for “the way in which patients have been let down”.

But he said significant progress had been made since the start of the investigation including the establishment of a new trust board, which “will not accept or tolerate” substandard care.

The trust is due to announce the appointment of a new chief executive imminently.

Sir David said he had seen the “disconnect between clinicians and managers” when he first joined the trust.

“It is critical that clinicians lead our divisions to ensure patients are at the centre of decision making,” he said.

“That is why we now have doctors, nurses, midwives and allied health professionals in charge of our clinical services, with support from managers, not the other way round.”

Efforts to tackle a “lack of visible leadership” include a new system of regular unannounced visits to wards and departments by senior executives.