TORBAY Hospital’s under-fire accident and emergency department has been branded ‘inadequate’ by health care inspectors.

Inspectors from the Care Quality Commission, who visited the hospital earlier this year, said in the emergency department at Torbay Hospital, patients did not always receive an initial assessment within 15 minutes, placing patients at risk.

Overall, inspectors said the 293-bed hospital ‘requires improvement’ although some individual services were rated good and staff came in for his praise for their level of care.

Torbay and South Devon NHS Trust bosses say the inspectors’ visit was in February at a time when the department was under particular strain and are already making plans for improvements.

Mairead McAlinden, chief executive of the trust, said: ‘We have had longstanding pressure on our urgent care service and at the time of our inspection our urgent and emergency care service was at maximum escalation.’

Facilities in the department were not suitable or well maintained and ‘compromised patient safety’, the inspectors’ report stated.

They also found the department did not have enough consultants or a named paediatric consultant on each shift.

In outpatients, the report said, there were not enough medical staff to allow the trust to ‘address its significant backlog’ of follow up appointments.  

A team of 70 inspectors from the CQC visited the trust over four days in February, checking eight core services for an acute hospital, speaking to staff as well as patients and relatives.

Staffing levels also came in for criticism, particularly in accident and emergency and the Louisa Cary children’s ward.

However, the level of care at the hospital was rated good as was surgery, intensive and critical care, maternity and children and young people’s services were rated good.

Nursing staff were praised with the report saying ‘patients were consistently treated with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect’.

They were also observed going ‘above and beyond’ in many cases to deliver outstanding support for patients and relatives, often at difficult times.

Trust bosses welcomed the report as a ‘benchmark’ to measure improvements.

Ms McAlinden said: ‘There are other areas where we know we need to improve. 

‘We have already addressed many of the areas identified as needing improvement.

‘Other improvements are more challenging to achieve, and will need significant investment, new ways of working to address our recruitment challenges, and changes to how and where we deliver care. 

‘We have plans in place to deliver the changes needed to improve, and the CQC Inspection Report provides us with a valuable benchmark against which to measure the success of these changes. 

‘We set high standards for our services and the CQC’s rating reflects our own self-assessment as ‘requires improvement.’ 

‘We are a new organisation at the beginning of a massive change programme to deliver an exciting new model of care and tackle the long standing challenges we face as a health and care system. 

‘I am delighted that the care and compassion of our staff was rated as “outstanding” and this is a very well deserved recognition of their commitment to providing high quality care – we are fortunate to have such dedicated staff working for this trust.

‘Two thirds of the services rated by CQC were found to be “outstanding” or “good”.

‘We are committed to providing excellent care and the best possible experience for local people who use our health and care services, this is what our local population and our partners rightly expect from us.

‘With the support and commitment of our staff, our partners and our community, we are confident that our next inspection will reflect the improvements we are already making.’