Safety warning for mothers and babies at Leicester maternity hospitals as watchdog downgrades care to ‘inadequate’

• Maternity staff told safety  inspectors that they were ‘being pushed to the brink’
• READ MORE: Junior doctors and consultants join forces in worst ever NHS strike

Maternity care at two NHS sites run by a Midlands NHS trust has been rated as ‘inadequate’ following a ‘deterioration in the level of care’, England’s health watchdog has said.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) downgraded its rating of the safety of maternity care provided at Leicester Royal Infirmary (LRI) and Leicester General Hospital (LGH) following inspections in February and March.

In a report, the CQC said staff told inspectors that they were being ‘pushed to the brink’ due to low staffing levels, which risked the safety of mothers and babies.

The University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, which runs the sites, said it took the findings of the report ‘incredibly seriously’ and was already making improvements.

Carolyn Jenkinson, deputy director of secondary and specialist healthcare at the CQC, said: ‘When we inspected maternity services at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, we observed a deterioration in the level of care being provided to women, people using the service and their babies.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has downgraded its rating of the safety of maternity care provided at Leicester Royal Infirmary

Inspectors also downgraded the safety rating for Leicester General Hospital after staff reported being ‘pushed to the brink’ due to low staffing levels

‘The leadership team has recently restructured with many new posts still needing to be embedded.

‘Leaders should continue to focus on improving their oversight of risks and managing performance so people can receive a better and safer standard of care.

‘Both services were regularly understaffed, which placed people and their babies at risk.

‘It also meant staff weren’t always able to take their breaks, which affected their wellbeing, morale, and ability to do their job.

‘We also found multiple examples where people’s care had been delayed in maternity triage due to doctors not being available.

READ MORE: Britain’s worst maternity units MAPPED – so is your local one of them? 

‘Some of these delays were very long, for example, six hours, and some resulted in people self-discharging before they had a medical review, which could place them at risk.

‘We will continue to monitor the trust, including through future inspections, to ensure the necessary improvements are made so people and their babies can receive safe and appropriate care.’

The trust’s three sites that provide maternity care were inspected as part of the CQC’s national maternity inspection programme.

All were inspected in the ‘safe’ and ‘well-led’ categories, two of multiple criteria that the CQC uses to inspect healthcare providers and form an overall rating.

St Mary’s Birth Centre’s rating under the ‘safe’ category remained as ‘good’, but its ranking under the ‘well-led’ criteria was downgraded from ‘good’ to ‘requires improvement’. 

The overall rating of the site, in Melton Mowbray, remains as ‘good’.

At LRI and LGH, the ‘safe’ rating was downgraded from ‘requires improvement’ to ‘inadequate’, and its well-led rating also went from ‘good’ to ‘requires improvement’.

The rating for maternity care as a whole at the two sites has been downgraded from ‘good’ to ‘requires improvement’.

Overall ratings for the two sites, and the trust, remain as ‘requires improvement’.

Following the inspection, the CQC issued a warning notice to the trust to ensure improvements are made.

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In its report, the watchdog also raised concerns over risk assessments and medicine storage but said the trust was already working on addressing key risks, including staffing levels, with employees feeling they could approach the trust’s new leadership team to raise concerns.

‘Deplorable and harrowing’: The maternity scandals that rocked the NHS last year 

The findings come in the wake of multiple damning reports into poor maternity care in England.

In October, a review into serious failings at East Kent Hospital Trust found that at least 45 babies died unnecessarily due to ‘catastrophic’ and ‘deep-rooted’ failures in care.

Affected families described being ‘disregarded, belittled and blamed’, with mothers left feeling like they were to blame for tragic incidents.

Dr Bill Kirkup, who led the inquiry, called for a new law so that organisations can be prosecuted if they stage cover-ups in future tragedies.

Meanwhile, a five-year inquiry, published in March last year, revealed 201 babies and nine mothers died needlessly during two decades of appalling care at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust.

The inquiry examined cases involving 1,486 families, mostly from 2000 to 2019, and found ‘repeated errors in care’ had led to injury to either mothers or their babies.

Findings from another NHS maternity scandal are also likely be published in the next 18 months.

Ms Ockenden, the midwife behind the scathing report into Shrewsbury and Telford, is currently leading an investigation into reports of poor care of mothers and babies at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.

The new investigation launched in September and will examine events from April 2012 to the present day.

At least nine babies and three mothers are believed to have died over the past three years at the trust, which runs 15 hospitals in the Midlands.

The CQC also said that staff at St Mary’s Birth Centre ‘should be proud of the safe care they were providing’, and that staff were appropriately trained.

In an open letter published on Wednesday, the trust said that it had ‘already identified many of the challenges raised by the CQC’ and improvements were being made after a new director of midwifery and clinical director were appointed earlier this year.

It said 24 midwives will join in November, following 25 who joined in January, and improvements had already been made in infection prevention and triage assessments but acknowledged that ‘there is much more to do’.

Julie Hogg, chief nurse at the trust, said in a statement: ‘Improving maternity services is a key priority and many of the highlighted challenges had already been identified before the inspection with plans in place to tackle them.

‘However, we take the report and its findings incredibly seriously and are using them to drive further improvements for women and birthing people.

‘We have invested in new equipment and daily safety checking and made rapid improvements to cleanliness and infection prevention practices.

‘We are also progressing plans for a new maternity theatre at the Leicester General Hospital, meaning that planned and emergency caesareans will take place in separate areas.

‘While we know there is more to do, we are committed to providing safe, high-quality and compassionate care and are encouraged that the reports highlight our hardworking staff and the actions being taken to ensure a culture of safety and openness.

‘We have invited the CQC back to see the changes we have made and the positive impacts they are having on the safety and quality of our service.’

Safety in NHS maternity care has come under focus following a series of damming reviews.

An inquiry into the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust, published in March last year, found that 300 babies had died or been left brain-damaged due to ‘repeated errors in care’. 

Meanwhile, a new investigation at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust is looking into 1,700 similar cases. 

Experts have warned that such cases are not isolated examples and that NHS maternity services need a rapid safety overhaul.

Last month MailOnline revealed that almost half of maternity services in England checked under a new inspection programme are failing.

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