STAFF at the Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust have been told in a letter from its chief executive Kathy Byrne that they need to take immediate action to improve its services.

The move follows an inspection by the Care Quality Commission last July and comes ahead of a publication of its report next month in which the trust is expected to be warned that it needs to deliver "significant and sustained improvement"

Staff have been invited to attend meetings taking place at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro, St Michael’s Hospital in Hayle and West Cornwall Hospital in Penzance all next week.

In her letter Kathy Byrne said: “This requires us to take immediate action and make significant improvements in a number of areas. Good, safe care is the number one priority for everyone at the trust and we will respond swiftly and effectively to each of the CQC recommendations.

“Strong clinical leadership is at the heart of our improvement programme and in the coming weeks we will demonstrate our commitment and capability to make the lasting changes our local community and regulators rightly expect.”

“The warning notice requires RCHT to take immediate action to deliver significant and sustained improvement in a range of services and areas. We are setting up face-to-face staff briefings next week to provide more detail but the broad areas that have been identified as requiring significant improvement include:

Outpatients – in particular the way we monitor and manage patients waiting for cardiology and ophthalmology appointments and procedures.

Surgical services - reducing delays and cancellations of surgical patients as well as ensuring compliance at all times with the World Health Organisation Five Steps to Safer Surgery checklist.

Maternity services – consistency in identifying and managing women whose condition is deteriorating as well as staff training for managing patients needing high dependency care.

Critical Care – reducing discharge delays from the critical care unit.

Children and young people services - ensuring sufficient qualified nursing staff in the paediatric emergency department to ensure safe care at all times.

Incidents - the systems and processes for identifying, reviewing and grading incidents as well as the timeliness of investigating incidents.

Staffing - ensuring there are sufficient numbers of staff at all times; this was particularly identified in specific areas of maternity.

Equipment - evidence that equipment checks have been carried out with up to date maintenance records.

Governance systems - improving governance systems to ensure patient confidentiality is maintained at all times, that our duty of candour is applied in all relevant cases and there is consistently effective management of poor behaviour, grievances and performance.”

In an official statement Kathy Byrne said: "The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has issued Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust with a warning notice following their inspection of the Trust in July.

"This requires us to take immediate action and make significant improvements in a number of areas.

"Good, safe care is the number one priority for everyone at the trust and we will respond swiftly and effectively to each of the CQC recommendations.

"Strong clinical leadership is at the heart of our improvement programme and in the coming weeks we will demonstrate our commitment and capability to make the lasting changes our local community and regulators rightly expect".