Trust achieves triple ‘Excellent’ score in PEAT assessment

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital has been rated ‘Excellent’ for the three categories of Environment, Food and Privacy & Dignity in this year’s Patient Environment Action Team (PEAT) assessment 2010—results for all hospitals in England have been published today by the National Patient Safety Agency.

The assessment was carried out earlier this year by a team of inspectors including patient representatives.

This year’s results are an improvement on the 2009 assessment when the Trust was rated ‘Excellent’ for Environment and Food but only ‘Good’ for Privacy & Dignity—2009 was the first year when the category of Privacy & Dignity was included.

PEAT Patient representative Susan Maxwell, who is also a patient representative on our Foundation Trust Council of Governors, says: “As a regular patient here at the hospital, I have a vested interest in all aspects of the patient environment and so I volunteered to join PEAT as a patient representative on their cleaning audits. I have experienced at first hand the sheer effort that goes into infection control, cleaning, maintenance, patient dignity and catering to make our hospital experience as safe and as comfortable as possible.

“I believe we are extremely lucky to have a team of highly responsible staff who volunteer as part of our team to carry out highly critical and unannounced ward visits on behalf of patients. The healthy competition between wards to get the highest scores has ensured that the standards are excellent which is why Chelsea and Westminster is one of the safest hospitals in the UK.”

Despite the Trust’s triple ‘Excellent’ PEAT score, there is no room for complacency because both noise/privacy and cleanliness/hygiene were highlighted as areas for improvement in the national inpatient survey 2009, published in May 2010.

The Trust is already addressing both areas:

• Eye masks and ear plugs are now available for patients to use free of charge on all wards while a contractor has been chosen to install glass panelling on 12 wards to reduce noise and improve privacy and dignity
  
• No patient admitted to the hospital for routine, planned surgery in the last 12 months has been infected with MRSA bacteraemia and the Trust is targeting continued reductions in both MRSA and C. difficile infections

PEAT assessment results at a glance 2006–2010