NHS South West Essex has been scored as ‘fair’ for its use of resources and ‘fair’ for its quality of services by the Care Quality Commission in its annual health check for 2008/09.
It’s the first time that the independent health and social care watchdog has carried out the check (which was formerly carried out by the Healthcare Commission).
This year, all primary care trusts were assessed under a new system for use of resources, and the outcome of ‘fair’ for NHS South West Essex is in line with the majority of PCT’s in the East of England and half of those in the country.
Pam Court, Chief Executive of NHS South West Essex, says: “We are disappointed with the score of ‘fair’ for the quality of our services and will be taking immediate action to address this.
“Significantly, under this category, we scored top marks in areas that we know are most important to our patients, such as safety and cleanliness, dignity and respect, standard of care and keeping the public healthy. We also scored top marks for good management.
“We clearly have more work to do in specific areas in order to improve our rating for 2009/10. Patients are at the heart of everything we do and we are fully committed to learning from our experiences and using them to make changes for the good.”
