7 March 2023
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Pages 1 and 2 of this report relate to the hospital and the ratings of that location, from page 3 the ratings and information relate to maternity services based at Royal Stoke University Hospital.
We inspected the maternity service at Royal Stoke University Hospital as part of our national maternity inspection programme. The programme aims to give an up-to-date view of hospital maternity care across the country and help us understand what is working well to support learning and improvement at a local and national level.
We will publish a report of our overall findings when we have completed the national inspection programme.
We carried out an announced focused inspection of the maternity service, looking only at the safe and well-led key questions.
Our rating of this hospital stayed the same. The Royal Stoke University Hospital is rated as requires improvement overall.
The inspection was carried out using a post-inspection data submission and an on-site inspection where we observed the environment, observed care, conducted interviews with patients and staff, reviewed policies, care records, medicines charts and documentation.
Following the site visit, we conducted interviews with senior leaders and reviewed feedback from women and birthing people and their families about the trust.
Royal Stoke University Hospital is the main site for maternity services for the trust, with County Hospital providing a full range of antenatal and postnatal services. There were around 6400 over 12 months. It comprises of a delivery suite with maternity theatres, induction of labour beds and enhanced recovery area. There are post and antenatal wards, a midwifery birth centre, a day care assessment area and maternity assessment unit (triage). The service also provides specialist substance misuse clinics, perinatal mental health and lifestyle clinics, fetal medicine and maternal medicine services. These services are available to women and birthing people from across Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire.
University Hospitals North Midlands NHS Trust comprises of Royal Stoke University Hospital and a Freestanding Midwifery Birth Unit (FMBU) at County Hospital, Stafford.
At the time of our inspection intrapartum care was suspended at County Hospital, however, all other antenatal and postnatal services at County Hospital were still available.
Demographic data shows a higher proportion of mothers were in the most deprived deciles at booking compared to the national average (18% in the most deprived decile compared to 14% nationally and 17% in 2nd most deprived decile compared to 12% nationally). A report completed in 2022 showed an increase in patient complexity for women using delivery suite services with many of those using the services categorised as moderate and high risk.
Following this inspection, under Section 29A of the Health and Social Care Act 2008, the trust was served a warning notice requiring them to make significant improvements to the safety of the service. The trust wrote to CQC to submit an action plan and confirm the immediate actions taken to improve the safety of the service. The trust has kept CQC informed of progress on improvements. We found that the service had deteriorated since the last inspection on February 2020.
How we carried out the inspection
You can find further information about how we carry out our inspections on our website: https://www.cqc.org.uk/what-we-do/how-we-do-our-job/what-we-do-inspection.