Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Councillors Tony Burles, Brian Crowe and Phoday Jarjussey.  Councillors Jazz Dhillon, Manjit Khatra and Scott Seaman-Digby were present as substitutes.

RESOLVED:  That all items of business be considered in public.

The Chairman welcomed those present to the meeting and thanked them for attending.  He noted that this year the Committee had scheduled two meetings on successive evenings with different Trusts invited to attend each meeting to discuss their Quality Account 2016/2017 reports.  Following the meeting, Democratic Services would contact attendees to get their feedback on this new format.

Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust (RBH)

Mr Richard Connett, Director of Performance and Trust Secretary at RBH, advised that the Trust's month 12 position had been reported to the Trust Board on Wednesday 26 April 2017.  It was anticipated that the Trust's Quality Account 2016/2017 report would be circulated for comment on Friday 28 April 2017 to meet the 30 day consultation requirement

In 2016/2017, there had been 13 reports of Clostridium difficile with no lapses of care.  Although there had been one case of MRSA reported, investigations concluded that the patient had already been infected when they had travelled to the UK from Australia.  [NB: subsequent to the meeting, one case of Clostridium had been notified as a lapse of care.]

At the time of the meeting, the Trust had achieved 92.67% against the 18 week referral to treatment target with a month 12 trajectory of 92.58%.  Mr Connett also reported that there had been 4 outbreaks of infection, 11 serious incidents (down from 24 in 2015/2016) and 0 never events during 2016/2017.  Members queried whether the 50% reduction in the number of serious incidents and no never events reported for 2016/2017 was as a result of underreporting.  Mr Hunt assured the Committee that there had been higher levels of Datix reporting during the period and that this included near misses. 

NHS Improvement (NHSI) had introduced the Single Oversight Framework (SOF) on 1 October 2016 to replace the Monitor 'Risk Assessment Framework' and the NHS Trust Development Authority 'Accountability Framework'.  SOF had been designed to help NHS providers to attain and maintain Care Quality Commission (CQC) ratings of ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’ and was not a performance assessment in its own right.  Each Trust had been segmented into one of four categories with RBH being placed in segment 2 (segment 1: Providers with maximum autonomy; segment 2: Providers offered targeted support; segment 3: Providers receiving mandated support for significant concerns; segment 4: Providers in special measures). 

Mr Nick Hunt, Director Service Development at RBH, advised that the Trust had been inspected by the CQC in June 2016 and had been disappointed that it hadn't received more Outstanding ratings and that it had received an overall rating of Requires improvement.  However, Surgery had scored two Outstandings at Harefield Hospital which was predominantly in relation to the transplant service.  The Trust had attended monthly clinical quality review meetings where it had been stated that this was the best Requires improvements report that had been seen.  Work had since been undertaken in relation to the World Health Organisation (WHO) checklist and to increase the size of notices next to hand hygiene stations.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 48.