Update from Peter Lewis on improvements to maternity services

An update from our chief executive, Peter Lewis, on the work that has been done, and continues to be done, to improve our maternity services following the Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection in November 2023:

In May this year the CQC published three reports into the maternity services that we provide from Musgrove Park Hospital (MPH), Yeovil District Hospital (YDH) and Bridgwater Community Hospital (BCH).

These reports illustrate that we had fallen short of the standards we expected to be delivering and we publicly apologised to the families that use our services and to our hard-working colleagues. We began work to improve our services immediately after the CQC’s inspections and have made good progress with more work to do.

Feedback from the women, birthing people and families that use our services is central to the improvements we are making and we are incredibly grateful to the women who have shared their experience with the BBC this week. We are working with NHS Somerset and with the Somerset Maternity & Neonatal Voices Partnership to ensure that the voice of service users is at the forefront of our improvements.

Colleagues working in our maternity services have a real desire to improve our services and very often they have the best ideas. Leaders have spent time listening to them, improving communication with our teams and ensuring colleagues can ask questions or raise issues with us or anonymously if they wish. We have also linked with the maternity service in Bath, which is rated outstanding, to see what we can learn from them.

The CQC reports highlighted improvements we need to make in several key areas such as our leadership systems and oversight of the safety of maternity services; governance and audit systems and processes; training and staff appraisal rates; guidelines and policies; and concerns about our triage services and lack of a second operating theatre at Musgrove Park Hospital.

In response we have:

• Improved the leadership and oversight of our maternity services by setting up an improvement oversight group jointly led by the trust’s chief nurse, chief operating officer and chief medical officer and we have improved the Trust Board’s oversight of our maternity services.
• Made significant changes to our governance and audit process to ensure that we manage our risks and issues well, have an effective system of learning and making improvements from our audits and alerts, and understand how our services are performing.
• Improved training and appraisal compliance. Compliance for all staff groups in our maternity-specific training is now at or over 90% and over 90% of colleagues in maternity services at MPH and YDH have now had an annual appraisal.
• Reviewed staffing levels in maternity services on all three sites. As a result, we are investing £1 million to increase staffing and recruiting midwives, obstetricians, and anaesthetists.
• Implemented a new evidence-based, standardised triage system at both YDH and MPH to ensure that we prioritise care based on clinical need.
• Upgraded the treatment room at MPH to create a new operating theatre. This facility is now open and in use.

People using our maternity services, colleagues working within the services, and the CQC have all noted the poor condition of the building in which the maternity service at MPH is housed. This can have a big impact on service users, and on our colleagues, and is a big concern to us.

The maternity unit at MPH is one of the few remaining buildings from the original hospital that was built during the second world war. A complete replacement is needed because it is not possible to redevelop the current building to meet modern standards, although we have continued to make improvements where we can. We have worked for a number of years on plans to replace it as part of the New Hospitals Programme and are continuing this work as we wait to hear the outcome of the review of the New Hospitals Programme announced by the Chancellor in July.

Sally Bryant, our director of midwifery, gave an update on all of this, as well as the work that continues to take place, to the BBC today. You can listen back on BBC Radio Somerset, and also watch the interview on BBC Points West.

Our message to those using our maternity services is to please speak to their midwife if they have any questions, or concerns, or would like more information.

With best wishes,

Peter Lewis

Chief Executive

Somerset NHS Foundation Trust