Publish date: 14 April 2023
Mersey Care has again been awarded an overall ‘Good’ rating from the Care Quality Commission (CQC), following an in-depth inspection carried out between November 2022 to January 2023. The Trust continues to be recognised as ‘Outstanding’ for the ‘Well Led’ domain and has now also been recognised as ‘Outstanding’ for the ‘Caring’ domain.
We had two announced and four unannounced inspections at six of our mental health and community health services, as well as one unannounced inspection of Wavertree Bungalow. Across the Trust, 41 inpatient wards/teams were inspected in total. As a requirement of the external re authorisation process, Ashworth Hospital was also visited.
Receiving an overall ‘Good’ rating and improving on the number of overall ‘Outstanding’ domains is a real achievement and a testament to all the hard work and innovation to which every one of you has contributed. This outcome is good, given that the inspection was so soon after the pandemic and just a year after the acquisition of the former North West Boroughs NHS Foundation Trust (NWB) and Southport and Formby community services (SFCS).
Three of the mental health services inspected were rated ‘Good’ and one was rated ‘Requires Improvement’. Two of our community health services were also rated ‘Good’. Wavertree Bungalow was rated ‘Requires Improvement’.
The inspection was not only an opportunity to showcase our work but also to look at our organisation through a different lens. The report describes our organisation as well-managed, and highlights areas of ‘outstanding practice’ in: using data to generate new patient/service insights, allowing staff time to focus on continuous learning and innovation, listening to patients, embedding our reducing restrictive practice work, heading up the first NHS led Global Centre for Research on Mental Health Inequalities and introducing quality improvement initiatives into community inpatient services.
We have recommendations to address, such as improvements to our estate, role specific autism training, and - consistent with other NHS trusts - how we respond to recruitment and staffing challenges, and the impact these pressures have on our patients, service users and staff.
The former Liverpool Community Health NHS Trust inspection and ratings from 2018 have been incorporated into our new ratings, without an inspection of these services, which impacted on the safe and effective domain ratings. We look forward to a re-review of these services so that the great improvements that we know have happened are accurately reflected in our overall rating.
It is worth saying again that this is also our first CQC inspection since the COVID-19 pandemic and the acquisition of NWB and SFCS. We fully recognise it takes time to assimilate teams, services and align cultures. However, this inspection describes very well how we have managed to carry out this change whilst keeping a strong sense of continuous improvement in place.
The Board of Directors hugely appreciate your tremendous efforts to make sure our patients, service users, carers and families receive the treatment, care and support they need. Your dedication, kindness, professionalism and compassion shine through the report and we should all be rightly proud of our collective achievements and the difference we make to the communities we serve.
CQC will continue to monitor our Trust and check improvements have been made, where required.
A huge thank you for all you do, each and every day, and well done.
The Wavertree Bungalow and Well Led Reports are available on our website. New certificates will be distributed in due course.