MATERNITY services at Worcestershire Royal Hospital have gone from 'requires improvement' to "good" after a recent inspection.

The Care Quality Commision found improvement in the care being provided in maternity services at the hospital, run by Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, following an inspection in October.

The inspection was carried out as part of CQC’s national maternity services inspection programme, which provides an up-to-date view of the quality of hospital maternity care across the country.

Despite the positive rating for maternity services, the overall rating for Worcestershire Royal Hospital remains as 'requires improvement' overall.

'Safe' has again been rated as 'requires improvement'. Effective, caring and responsive were not looked at during this inspection and remain rated as good.

Carolyn Jenkinson, CQC’s deputy director of secondary and specialist healthcare, said: “When we visited maternity services at Worcestershire Royal Hospital, staff were working hard to deliver a high standard of care to women, people using the service, and their babies.

"We found leaders were visible and approachable, they also had the skills and abilities to run the service well and understood and managed the priorities and issues they faced.

“We found the service had good medicines management. Staff followed systems and processes to safely prescribe and administer medicines to people.

Staff reviewed each person regularly and provided advice to women and people using the service about the medicines they were taking.

“Our inspectors saw that staff kept clear and up-to-date records of people’s care and treatment, it was stored securely and easily available to all staff providing care.

When people using the service transferred to a new team’s care, there were no delays in staff accessing their records which meant they were clear about people’s individual health needs.

The inspection referenced how the hospital had been experiencing issues with recruitment, retention and sickness of staff.

However, since the inspection the trust has recruited more staff to maintain safe staffing levels.

Ms Jenkinson added: “Despite finding some issues, staff had worked hard since our previous inspection to improve the quality of care they were delivering to people.

“We’ll continue to monitor the service, including through future inspections, to ensure people continue to receive a good standard of care.”