EAST Cheshire NHS Trust has been rated ‘Good’ by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) following a recent inspection of the trust’s services and leadership.

The trust, which runs local community health services along with Macclesfield General Hospital, Congleton War Memorial Hospital and Knutsford and District Community Hospital, underwent a major inspection of its services, followed by an inspection of its leadership team, in January and February 2018.

Certain areas of the trust’s practices were rated outstanding, including: community end of life care; working with local members of the public with leaning disabilities; the frailty service had developed a ‘wrap-around’ treatment to support patients at home before and after hospital admission; and the children’s ward was especially responsive to children and young people with learning disabilities.

John Wilbraham, the trust’s chief executive, said: “I am delighted that we have been given this rating, which shows our patients can be assured that they are receiving high-quality care delivered by professional and caring staff.

“It is a testament to the 2,500 hard-working and caring staff who make our organisation what it is. I am particularly pleased that inspectors found a number of examples of outstanding practice among community and acute teams and rated our Community End of Life Care Service as ‘outstanding’ under the CQC’s ‘Caring’ domain.”

During the inspection, there were also some areas within the trust which the inspection found to require improvement.

Referring to whether the trust was safe, the inspectors said: “We rated it as ‘requires improvement’ because: we found medicines were not consistently dispensed, recorded, stored correctly and safely within the medical wards. Storage of medicines on medical wards did not always follow best practice medicine guidelines.

“On the children’s ward, there was a shortage of band 6 nurses at night who had the advanced paediatric life support training.”

However, according to the report, ‘staffing levels and skill mix were planned, implemented and reviewed to keep people safe in most areas’.

Mr Wilbraham added: “Even with this rating we will continue to work to improve what we do for those who need us.”