Maternity services at Birmingham hospital ordered to improve by watchdogs

Health watchdogs have ordered an improvement in maternity services at a Birmingham hospital following an inspection. Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspectors said the service at City Hospital had dropped from a 'good' rating to 'requires improvement', highlighting a number of issues of concern.

Bosses at Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust said maternity had now been moved to the new Midland Met University Hospital adding improvements already implemented meant the service was 'unrecognisable' from the one described in the report. The CQC said the inspection was carried in part due to concerns raised by whistle-blowers about poor culture, staff shortages, long waits to be induced and a lack of thorough investigation of serious incidents.

A warning notice has been issued calling for significant improvements around the environment, equipment, safeguarding, use of interpreters and staffing. Charlotte Rudge, CQC deputy director of operations in the Midlands, said: "When we inspected maternity services at City Hospital, we found leaders needed to rapidly improve a number of areas to make care safer for women, people using the service and their babies.

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"Staffing was a significant problem. Many staff had to cancel their training and midwives with a specialist role said they were frequently pulled from those roles to cover staffing shortages in other areas which could put people at risk. Also, when we looked at reasons why staff were leaving the service, it was due to low staffing levels and feeling they were unable to give people the best possible care they would like to.

"We had concerns around the environment and equipment. Daily checks of emergency and lifesaving equipment weren’t effectively carried out, and leaders hadn’t made sure all parts of the service had an effective process in place for checking emergency equipment. We also found the triage area didn’t have a resuscitate and the environment didn’t provide people with privacy and dignity as it was cramped and private conversations could be overheard.

"We heard staff were working hard to put systems in place to include people in their care and to support equality, diversity and inclusion. Staff used flash cards to communicate with people who were deaf or had a learning disability, and they were also trying to produce handy guides when caring for people living with anxiety, deafness, blindness, and those who identified as trans or non-binary to help with communication concerns.

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BrumWish 2024 is Birmingham Live's festive drive to get thousands of gifts to children and young people across our city - among them the homeless, the vulnerable, kids in care, kids who are poorly or struggling, and kids who have little.

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"We issued the trust with a warning notice to focus their attention on making improvements to maternity services. Since the inspection they’ve produced an action plan to address our concerns, and have completed all actions. We’ll be monitoring this service closely, including through further inspections, to make sure people receive safe care while these improvements are implemented."

Mel Roberts, Chief Nursing Officer at the Trust said: "We accept that earlier this year our maternity service was not where we wanted it to be, so we commissioned an external peer review and welcomed scrutiny from the CQC to inform the development of a comprehensive improvement plan. All actions in that plan have now been completed and environmental complaints have been addressed following our whole service move to a brand-new home in the new Midland Met University Hospital.

"In this we provide both midwife-led and consultant care for parents-to-be. Our service is unrecognisable from that described in the report. Whilst there is always more to do, we are confident that we provide a safe and holistic service, putting the needs of our families first, and engaging our workforce to be proud in the service they deliver.

"It is a fact that we can ensure better outcomes when parents-to-be to seek our service early in their pregnancy journey so I would like to remind all our communities of this."