Chelsea and Westminster performs well in NHS performance ratings

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has performed strongly in the annual NHS performance ratings published today by the Healthcare Commission.

Thanks to the hard work and expertise of our staff, the Trust was rated ‘Excellent’ for its use of resources and ‘Good’ for the quality of its services.

The Trust met all core standards recognised by the Healthcare Commission as being most important for patients by, for example, achieving assessment scores of 13/13 for safety and cleanliness, 8/8 for standard of care and 9/10 for dignity and respect.

Chelsea and Westminster also met all national targets in areas including reducing MRSA rates, providing shorter waiting times for treatment and access to services – with one exception.

This relates to the national Choose and Book system which allows GPs and their patients to book directly onto our appointments system.

During April 2007, the Trust uncovered a technical fault while piloting Choose and Book in one clinical specialty which could potentially have compromised the integrity of patients’ confidential medical records.

As a direct result of the serious concerns that were raised, the Trust delayed the rollout of Choose and Book to other specialties until September 2007.

We believe it was correct to put the best interests of patients above the requirements of booking targets, even though the Trust ‘failed’ to keep up with the required targets for the number of services booked directly by GPs – 85-90% of services at Chelsea and Westminster are now directly bookable via Choose and Book.

The Trust is disappointed that, despite providing high quality care for patients, it has not retained an ‘Excellent’ rating for the quality of its services – we expected to be ‘Excellent’ rather than ‘Good’ even taking into account the Choose and Book target.

We were on track to score ‘Excellent’ for quality of services until the Healthcare Commission made a late decision that it could not assess NHS trusts on a target around delayed transfers of patients from hospital. As we had scored well on this target, removing it from the assessment lowered our rating from ‘Excellent’ to ‘Good’.

Heather Lawrence, Chief Executive said: “We are proud to be the best performing NHS acute hospital trust in North West London, alongside the Royal Brompton.

“This independent assessment confirms to patients that they can continue to expect a high standard of care when they come to Chelsea and Westminster.

“I would like to thank all our staff who have worked so hard over the past year to provide our patients with such excellent care.

For more information contact Matt Akid (Head of Communications) on 020 3315 6828.

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