Following an inspection in October 2024, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated medical care services at Aintree University Hospital as Good, an improvement on its previous rating of Requires Improvement.
This is the final of six reports rating services at Aintree, the Royal and Broadgreen as Good, following a series of inspections last winter. The CQC also gave Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust a rating of Good for being Well Led, improving on its previous rating of Inadequate.
The CQC now gives a single trust level rating, which is the rating for the well-led key question for a trust. Services and locations are still rated for all five key questions and given an ‘overall’ aggregated rating.
For the purposes of CQC regulation, Liverpool University Hospitals NHS FT and Liverpool Women’s NHS FT are still considered as separate statutory entities, and the well-led inspection was of LUHFT hospital sites, however the CQC report acknowledges that the UHL Group Board now covers both trusts.
Following their inspection of medical care services at Aintree, the CQC rated the service Good for being Effective, Caring, Responsive and Well Led, and Requires Improvement for being Safe.
Inspectors highlighted that the service has a positive learning culture, with regular training, patient safety events and transparency in sharing lessons learnt with staff reporting they feel confident to raise any concerns or highlight any issues.
The service was described as friendly and helpful, with patients, their families and carers defining staff as responsive and determined to provide reassurance when explaining care and treatment plans. Colleagues were said to prioritise personalised care and adapt to meet the needs of the individual, maintaining cleanliness, reducing risk and ensuring patients feel safe.
The CQC also recorded feedback from partners and stakeholders about the collaborative work teams do to support admissions and discharges, including community staff attending daily bed meetings, discharge coordinators working with external agencies to support patients with complex requirements and the collaborative effort to prevent patients from being readmitted unnecessarily.
The CQC did indicate areas for improvement, including medicines management and infection prevention.
The full report will be available on the CQC website here.
Speaking about improving the Well Led rating from Inadequate to Good, James Sumner, Group Chief Executive at NHS University Hospitals of Liverpool Group, said: “This is an incredible achievement for our organisation and one that follows a considerable period of change within our leadership and governance models. I know that this has also taken a huge shift in our way of working across the organisation moving to an approach that focuses on risk in order to drive improvement, so I would like to thank colleagues for their commitment to adopting the new approach and embedding it, and for their work in helping us reach this point.”
Peter Turkington, Executive Managing Director of Aintree University Hospital, said: “This Good rating is a true reflection of the dedication and determination of our talented colleagues at Aintree who work hard to provide the very best quality of care to our patients. I am pleased that the CQC has recognised the improvements that we have made, in particular the collaborative work we are doing with our partners to ensure patients receive care in the most appropriate setting.
“The CQC did indicate areas for improvement, and we are working to address these, but this improved rating is a fantastic achievement that our teams should be very proud of.”
