Yesterday I attended the Board Meeting of the Royal Wolverhampton Trust at New Cross Hospital. The meeting was open to the Public, and it was an interesting one as the RWT were debating the Care Quality Commissions inspection on the Trust.
There was a lot of information flowing through the meeting. But I was struck by the comments of the Chief Executive when he reported that there were “Three Wards blocked by patients because of Local Authority Social Services cuts.”
This is of course a major issue and one that should be of course of a major concern for both the Trust and Local Authorities. The Chief Executive was clearly frustrated by the results of the CQC. He was also up -tight with regards to the resources and the difficulty that the Trust was having in ensuring the facilities were operated efficiently.
He said that resources were becoming a problem, and that “Politicians should be honest.” He explained that some patients required one to one nursing care, but the Trust doesn’t have that sort of resource. He said that the Health Service had been given £8billion in extra resource in this years budget. But it needed £22billion!
He informed the Board that the NHS needs more staff if it is going to continue to do what it is being expected to do. If the Resources are not forthcoming then the Politicians need to tell us “what we are NOT going to continue to be doing, that we are doing now”. He went onto say that the Trust’s doing all that it can, but the Trust needs an extra three million pounds to be spent on Nursing.
He also said that there was 15% of NHS Directors jobs lying vacant across the service nationally, the reason being that people just do not want the jobs.
CQC overall assessment of the Royal Hospital Trust was judged to be Requiring Improvement.
