THE MATERNITY services at City Hospital have been rated as “requires improvement” following an inspection earlier this year.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has said it is now taking action to protect people using maternity services, which have now moved to the new Midland Metropolitan Hospital. 

Service leaders have said they hope this will solve some of the issues.

After conducting an inspection of the City Hospital site in June, the maternity services, which are a part of the Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust, have been issued with a Section 29A Warning Notice, telling them they were required to “make significant improvements regarding the quality to healthcare to ensure the trust took immediate action to keep women, birthing people and babies safe.”

This inspection was carried out in part due to concerns raised by whistle-blowers about poor culture, staff shortages, long waits to be induced and a lack of thorough investigation of serious incidents.  

As well as the service’s overall rating dropping from “good” to “requires improvement”, so has the rating for how well-led the service is and how effective it is.

The safety of the service has gone from being “good” to “inadequate”, with the inspection finding that “women and birthing people did not always receive care in line with national guidance.”

Out of date stock was found on the antenatal ward, emergency equipment had not been regularly checked and the service was considered understaffed by those who worked there.

It was also found that women did not always receive appropriate interpreting services and staff felt they did not always have time to carry out safeguarding procedures.

Following the inspection, CQC has instructed the service to focus their attention on making significant improvements around the environment, equipment, safeguarding, use of interpreters and staffing.

However, since the inspection, the service has moved and City Hospital no longer offers maternity services. It is now known as the City Health Campus. 

In the report, it said leaders of the maternity service “were aware of the limitations presented by the old estate of the maternity unit and were hopeful many of the issues regarding the environment would resolve when moving to the new hospital”.

Speaking on the findings, Charlotte Rudge, CQC deputy director of operations in the Midlands, said: “When we inspected maternity services at City Hospital, we found leaders needed to rapidly improve a number of areas to make care safer for women, people using the service and their babies.

“Staffing was a significant problem. Many staff had to cancel their training and midwives with a specialist role said they were frequently pulled from those roles to cover staffing shortages in other areas which could put people at risk.”

She added: “We issued the trust with a warning notice to focus their attention on making improvements to maternity services.

“Since the inspection, they’ve produced an action plan to address our concerns and have completed all actions. 

“We’ll be monitoring this service closely, including through further inspections, to make sure people receive safe care while these improvements are implemented.” 

Mel Roberts, Chief Nursing Officer at Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust said: “We accept that earlier this year our maternity service was not where we wanted it to be, so we commissioned an external peer review and welcomed scrutiny from the CQC to inform the development of a comprehensive improvement plan.

“All actions in that plan have now been completed and environmental complaints have been addressed following our whole service move to a brand-new home in the new Midland Met University Hospital.

"In this, we provide both midwife-led and consultant care for parents-to-be. Our service is unrecognisable from that described in the report.

“Whilst there is always more to do, we are confident that we provide a safe and holistic service, putting the needs of our families first, and engaging our workforce to be proud in the service they deliver. 

“It is a fact that we can ensure better outcomes when parents-to-be to seek our service early in their pregnancy journey so I would like to remind all our communities of this.”

Overall, the trust’s rating remains “requires improvement”.