7:20am Thursday 15th May 2008
By Alex Hayes
A DAMNING report on the state of a local hospital could scupper its bid to become a Foundation Trust.
Ealing Hospital, in Uxbridge Road, came bottom in the report, which was published by the Healthcare Commission yesterday.
In the survey, patients rated the hospital as the second worst for cleanliness of wards out of the 165 English hospital trusts.
Patients also gave low ratings for the standard of information provided by doctors and nurses before operations and when people are discharged, the use of mixed-sex wards, helping people who cannot feed themselves and security.
The survey was carried out last August by the commission, an independent body which checks standards of care in NHS hospitals.
Around 76,000 patients across England took part.
Adewale Kadiri, the commission's area manager for central London, said: "I don't think these figures will have been a surprise to the trust as they were not that good last year either.
"These issues can have a number of different effects on patients, and the most startling one is the cleanliness of wards, as it opens people up to all sorts of infection issues as we have seen with other trusts.
"What we are saying to them is they have really had enough time see which areas your patients are unhappy with, and now you have to make improvements and quickly."
Ealing Hospital NHS Trust is currently bidding to become a Foundation Hospital, which would mean there would be less regulation on the managers from the government, and it would face less frequent inspections.
Mr Kadiri said: "A body called Monitor makes the decision whether to grant Foundation status, but I would be surprised if they did not take these findings into account when they make their decision.
"One of the things they will be looking at is the quality of leadership, and I don't believe it's possible for an organisation to be well lead and have all these problems."
Michael Woodhouse, who has been a patient representative for the hospital since 2002, said: "Some of these areas are familiar to me, because they are the sort of things that recur as areas of major improvement for patients.
"I do not think this will harm the bid to become a Foundation Hospital as we are nine months on from when the survey took place and there have been improvements."
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