Leighton Hospital
Coordinates: 53°07′12″N 2°28′40″W / 53.1199°N 2.4778°W Leighton Hospital is a hospital located in the town of Crewe in the county of Cheshire, England. Together with Victoria Infirmary, Northwich, and Elmhurst Intermediate Care Centre, Winsford, it forms part of the Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Level of care
The hospital is rated as for quality of service Good, with 90% of patients being treated within 18 weeks of referral and Average for cleanliness and comfort.
Achievements
CQC Inspection
In October 2014, the Trust and its three sites underwent a comprehensive inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). The report into their findings was published in January 2015, and provided the Trust with an overall rating of "Good", a rating which only a small number of acute hospital trusts in England have achieved.
Maternity Services
In March 2015, the Trust's Maternity Unit was named "Midwifery Service of the Year" by the Royal College of Midwives. This was followed up in May 2015 with Leighton Hospital being awarded full accreditation from UNICEF's Baby Friendly Initiative.
Women having babies at the Trust are provided with some of the safest care in the country, according to an external assessment which awarded the Maternity service the best possible rating. The Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts (CNST) awarded the Trust with Level 3 status after scoring 48 out of 50 against indicators which included the care of women in labour, screening of their mental health, whether they are supported to breastfeed, staffing levels, and the number of incidents and complaints. The Trust is enormously proud of this achievement.
The Maternity Unit at Leighton Hospital has undergone significant refurbishment works over the past few years, including a fully reconfigured Labour Ward and the introduction of a new Midwifery-Led Unit designed to improve the overall birth experience for low-risk pregnancies. The Trust has been awarded the Baby Friendly Stage 2 accreditation from UNICEF. Baby Friendly focuses on staff knowledge and skills to support families with their infant feeding choices. The work undertaken by the Trust’s Infant Feeding Team has led to improved health outcomes for mothers and their babies, with the highest breast feeding rates and lowest smoking rates during pregnancy in eight years. A national CQC patient survey rated the Trust as better than most others for the labour and birth elements of the pregnancy journey, scoring a total of 9.1 out of 10 (just 0.3 points of the highest score nationally).
Top 40 Hospital
In May 2014, the Trust was named as one of the best in the country for the third year in a row. The CHKS 40Top Hospitals award is based on the evaluation of 22 key performance indicators and covers important areas such as safety, clinical effectiveness, health outcomes, efficiency, patient experience and quality of care. In 2012, the Trust also received the ‘Most Improved Trust in the Country’ award from CHKS, recognising the progress that the staff and services have made in recent years.
Reducing Mortality Rates
In recent years Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust had been classed as having "higher than expected" mortality rates, and work has been taking place over the past few years to identify and address the causes of this. On July 30, 2014, the Health and Social Care Information Centre published its latest mortality data, with the Trust now back in the “as expected” range for the Summary Hospital-level Mortality Indicator (SHMI). This improved position is the result of the extensive work that has been undertaken by clinical teams at the Trust. It is expected that this figure will be reduced further in the next release of the data in October 2014 when the correction of a data recording issue will take effect.
Alongside SHMI, the Trust also uses another national model of mortality measurement - the Risk Adjusted Mortality Index (RAMI). MCHFT’s RAMI has been better than peer for a number of months now and has improved consistently over the past three years. The latest RAMI figures, covering the 12 months to July 2014, also suggest that the Trust is performing better than the national average.
New Theatres and Critical Care Facilities
Spring 2014 saw the first patients treated in the new Theatre suite at Leighton Hospital. Part of the £22.8million project which also saw the creation of a new Critical Care unit, the new Theatres offer opportunities to further develop existing ways of working in a way that will maximise the benefits of new theatre designs such as barn theatres and integrated theatres.