LEADERSHIP at four local hospitals has been called into question in a critical watchdog report.

The Care Quality Commission inspected Fairfield, North Manchester and Royal Oldham hospitals as well as Rochdale Infirmary over 12 days in February and March and have rated leadership ‘inadequate’.

Trust leaders say new management took charge immediately after the inspection ended and set about putting in place a wide range of improvement measures.

You can read the trust's full response to the report - and three other articles about the inspection - in separate news stories elsewhere on this website. 

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Leadership at four local hospitals criticised in new inspection report

The report lifts the lid on serious concerns about the confidence hospital staff had in the complaints system.

"Staff were very positive about the visibility of (current leaders) and felt they both listened to concerns and took action to address them where possible; staff stated that, historically, this had not always been the case and that, in the past, the raising of concerns was not always encouraged," says the report.

It adds: “Staff did not feel that non-executive directors were accessible or visible throughout the organisation.

“They felt the culture had until recently focused on financial matters and operational delivery rather than service quality.

“We found that there was not a strong culture of reporting and learning from incidents as across the trust as a whole.

“Staff stated they did not enter all reportable incidents to the system as there was often no managerial response or feedback.”

Only 23 per cent of staff in some departments had annual appraisals compared with all staff in other departments.

It adds: “We found poor leadership and oversight in a number of services, notably maternity services, urgent care (particularly a North Manchester), the high-dependency unit at Royal Oldham and in services for children in young people.

“In all of these services, leaders tolerated high levels of risks to quality and safety without taking appropriate and timely action to address them.

“In a number of services, key risks were not understood, recorded, escalated or mitigated effectively.

“Some staff accepted sub-optimal care as the norm and patients’ needs were not appropriately considered or met.”

When new bosses came in and tried to encourage more reporting of issues, it led to a backlog because of the “historical poor governance system for the management of incidents.”

Due to the backlog, managers found it hard to study complaints and identify where things were going wrong.

Another review by the Health and Social Care Advisory Service identified 14 key concerns about the management culture and complaint investigations.

“It was identified that the quality of investigations was poor, and there had not been analysis training (related to the complaints) for three years.”

Visit cqc.org.uk/provider/RW6 to read the full report.