Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust Quality Account 2016-2017

Healthwatch Northamptonshire statement on Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust (NGH)
draft Quality Account 2016/17
During 2016/17 Healthwatch Northamptonshire has continued to work with NGH through attending
the Patient and Carer Experience and Engagement Group (PCEEG) and providing patient
feedback. We have also held monthly ‘Pop Up Shops’ at the hospital to help patients, staff and
other members of the public share their views and experiences.
Healthwatch Northamptonshire believes that this Quality Account demonstrates the progress NGH
has made against their 2016/17 Quality Priorities, and are pleased to see an honest assessment of
what still needs to be done as well as details of the many quality improvement initiatives that have
taken place during the year. We support the way NGH have linked their Quality Priorities to their
three year Quality Improvement Strategy as a way of embedding change within the Trust.
We believe NGH has chosen appropriate Quality Priorities for 2017/18 and are pleased that the
lessons learnt from complaints and serious incidents were considered when developing them.
Through attendance at the PCEEG we have been able to observe the good work carried out by
NGH during 2016/17 to improve how patient experience is both recorded, through the development
of robust processes and methods for gathering patient feedback, and acted upon and are
encouraged by the good representation of divisions and services at NGH on the PCEEG. We
support NGH as they focus on ensuring this feedback leads to short term and long term
improvements and learning and will continue to work with them to in ensuring high quality,
innovative and patient-centred care.
The most common theme to the feedback we received about poor patient experiences at NGH
during 2016/17 was communication. This is a theme mentioned in several areas of this Quality
Account and we encourage NGH to continue to work on ensuring all frontline staff (including
administration) understand the importance of communicating well with patients and their relatives,
as communication and staff attitude tends to have the biggest impact on the quality of patient
experience.
We congratulate NGH for the progress they have made resulting in those services that were
previously rated as ‘Requires Improvement’ or ‘Inadequate’ now being rating as ‘Good’ following
the recent CQC inspection. This reflects much hard work by both management and staff.
88