The regulator said it is also taking enforcement action following a probe into the trust’s poor finances and governance arrangements, which has left it facing a deficit of at lease £64 million this year, because of an average overspend of £1.2 million a week.
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Placing a hospital in special measures is defined by health service watchdog Monitor, which carries out the act, as introducing “a set of specific interventions created to improve the quality of care within a reasonable time”.
The public sector union Unison, which represents health workers, said the inspections reflected unfairly on staff.
He added: “Everywhere across the country people would be very envious of the sort of results we get day in, day out”.
Patients are less likely to die here, be harmed, or catch a hospital-acquired infection than at nearly any other trust in the country.
The trust in charge, Cambridge University Hospitals, which serves 500,000 patients, has been placed under the close supervision of the health regulator Monitor.
The CQC’s chief inspector of hospitals, Professor Sir Mike Richards, said: “We were concerned that in some services, staff were caring for people in areas unfamiliar to them, meaning patient safety and welfare was placed at risk”.
According to Monitor, special measures are applied to NHS trusts and foundation trusts where there are “serious failures in care quality and where there are concerns that existing management can not make the necessary improvements without support”.
Perhaps the most worrying aspect of the Addenbrooke’s story is not that such a world-renowned hospital has ended up in a predicament like this, but rather that it happened so quickly.
Jane Ramsey, chair of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and David Wherrett, acting chief exec, today issued a joint statement in which they apologised to patients for a lack of effective systems and processes across the Trust.
The failings come just two years after Addenbrooke’s was rated as one of the safest hospitals in the country.
What does this say about the state of the NHS?
Although the CQC report rated overall services as inadequate, it praised Addenbrooke’s staff as hardworking, passionate and “prepared to swim upstream” against the pressures they faced.
Low staffing levels were affecting the trust’s ability to deliver efficient care.
Certainly it seems to have made mistakes – as the troubles with its £200m computerised patient records programme illustrates – but it’s hard to escape the feeling that this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Pressure on surgical services meant routine operations were frequently cancelled and patients were waiting longer for operations.
In one case example, high levels of nitrous oxide – known as laughing gas and used for pain relief – were detected in the Rosie Birth Centre.
We are part of one NHS and social care system in East Sussex, and the responsibility for securing improvements lies across the board – with every doctor, nurse, healthcare professional, manager, porter and cleaner.
“It’s reassuring that the trust has already started to address some of the issues raised by the CQC and our investigation”.
The roadshow will be taking place on Friday, September 25, from 10am to noon in the main entrance at Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital, and at Riverside Leisure Centre auto park in Morpeth from 2pm to 3pm, and again on Tuesday, September 29, from 10am to noon in Blyth Market Place, and 2pm to 4pm in Ashington’s John Street vehicle park.
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