LEIGHTON Hospital’s maternity services require improvement.

That is according to a report by the Care Quality Commission published today (April 19).

It follows an inspection at the hospital, run by Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, last September.

Carolyn Jenkinson, CQC’s deputy director of secondary and specialist care said: “When we inspected maternity services at Leighton Hospital, we were disappointed to find the care provided was not at the level women, people using the service, and their babies have a right to expect.”

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The inspection was carried out as part of CQC’s national maternity services inspection programme.

Inspectors found that staff weren’t all up-to-date on mandatory training and some did not know how to use equipment properly.

Leaders meanwhile weren’t always monitoring to see when issues or risks arose while ligature risk assessments hadn’t been completes since 2018 and were only updated after it was raised during the inspection.

The report adds that there was not enough surgical theatre capacity when there were two obstetric emergencies at the same time and while this had been raised as a risk, leaders had not taken steps to address it.

Inspectors also felt the design and layout of the triage area didn’t always keep people safe, with the waiting area separate from where people were assessed by clinical staff.

As such, staff couldn’t see if someone was unwell or if their health had deteriorated.

Due to these issues, Leighton’s maternity services’ rating dropped from ‘good’ to ‘requires improvement’.

This has in-turn seen the hospital’s overall rating decline from good to requires improvement, with MCHT’s overall rating remaining good.

Ms Jenkinson added: “We found that leaders had the right skills and abilities to run the service, but didn’t always understand the issues the service was facing or take action when they needed to make improvements.

“There were delays between some incidents being reported and staff also weren’t always reporting incidents when they should.

“In addition, Leaders weren’t always taking timely action to address and review issues when they were found. This included occasions where people had experienced bleeding after giving birth.”

She continued: “We found the service didn’t have enough medical or midwifery staff to match the planned numbers working. The lack of staff had led to delays when people needed planned and emergency caesarean sections.

“Leaders hadn’t taken steps to address these problems, even though it was putting women, people using the service, and their babies at risk of harm.

“We found that staff were doing their best and were focused on the needs of people using the service despite these challenges.”

Scott Malton, chief nursing officer for MCHT, explained that since the inspection more than £1 million has been invested to improve the service.

He said: "We recognise that there is still more work to do, and we will carry on our journey of continuous improvement to provide the very best level of safe quality care for our community.

"The maternity service has made significant strides forward in recent months, we have invested in our people, recruiting additional members to our midwifery team as well as employing extra members of staff to free up time to enable our midwives to focus on delivering babies and supporting our local mums.

"We have also expanded services, bringing in additional members of staff to support work in our maternity theatres, alongside making improvements within our maternity triage and waiting rooms."

Ms Jenkinson added: “Since the inspection last year, the trust has provided investment and made improvements to the maternity service.

“We’ll continue to monitor the service, including through future inspections.

“If we’re not assured that the trust has made improvements, we will not hesitate to take further action to keep people safe.”