Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust is put into special measures after critical Care Quality Commission report

Cornwall’s main NHS hospital is being put into special measures after inspectors uncovered a catalogue of serious failings, including patients dying and others going blind after waiting too long for treatment.

A Care Quality Commission report on care and safety standards at the Royal Cornwall hospitals NHS trust is one of the most critical the watchdog has ever published. It details how patients came to harm at the Royal Cornwall hospital in Truro because they waited too long to be treated, how cancer operations were cancelled and how people with the deadly infection sepsis did not receive antibiotics quickly enough.

During a visit in July a team of CQC inspectors uncovered serious and in some cases potentially life-threatening flaws and inadequacies in a number of areas of care, including the hospital’s cardiac, maternity and surgical services. Standards in key departments had not improved despite previous CQC warnings, the report says.

“During this inspection and in our previous visits to the Royal Cornwall hospital we have found persistent evidence of care that falls below those standards. As a result patients have been let down and some have been placed at risk. It is clear that these are not isolated lapses, ” said Prof Ted Baker, the CQC’s chief inspector of hospitals.

Cornwall Council was also criticised for not being to cope with all the discharges from the hospital in a timely manner.

October 2017