Joint Healthwatch Response to Latest CQC Report on Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has published two new reports into services at Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospital Trust (NUTH) following a series of inspections in June, July and September 2023. The CQC has reduced the overall rating from ‘outstanding’ to ‘requires improvement’. Within this, the ‘caring’ domain is rated as ‘good’ and the ‘well led’ domain rated as ‘inadequate’. You can see the full reports here https://www.cqc.org.uk/provider/RTD

In response to the CQC reports, Healthwatch Newcastle, Healthwatch Northumberland, Healthwatch North Tyneside and Healthwatch Gateshead have come together to make the following joint response:

We are obviously disappointed to see these findings about a provider of key services to people in Newcastle, Northumberland, North Tyneside and Gateshead. We know residents and patients will have questions and concerns too.

We are reassured that the CQC findings around caring is rated ‘good’.

We welcome the robust approach taken by the CQC and the clear expectations of NUTH set out in these reports.

We encourage NUTH to take an open, transparent and accessible approach to its work to further investigate and improve its services. This will help rebuild patients’ and residents confidence in NUTH.

We will be seeking assurances from NUTH’s leadership that appropriate measures are being put in place to tackle the issues identified by these reports and are encouraged by the approaches taken by NUTH’s new leadership so far.

We have encouraged NUTH to quickly involve service users, families and carers as well as their staff teams in its service improvement activities and we have offered our support in doing this. We are meeting with NUTH in the next few weeks to agree how we can work together.

If local people want to share their views now, or in the future, your local Healthwatch is here to hear people’s views on local health and care services. This will help ensure that any changes meet people’s needs now or in the future.  Please contact your local Healthwatch if you want to share your views.