Trust’s Quality of Services Rated as ‘Excellent’

Posted on 18th October, 2007

The Healthcare Commission has rated the quality of services provided by Devon Partnership NHS Trust as ‘excellent’ in its latest Annual Health Check. The assessment, which relates to performance during 2006/07, looks at whether NHS organisations are getting the basics right and are taking steps to make and sustain ongoing improvements in the care they provide. The ‘excellent’ rating for the quality of services is an improvement from the rating of ‘fair’ the previous year.  The rating is made up of three components and is based on the fact that the Trust was rated as ‘excellent’ in meeting new national targets, fully met existing targets and fully met the core standards set down by the Healthcare Commission.  The Trust was rated as ‘good’ for the quality of its substance misuse services and ‘fair’ for its clinical and cost effectiveness and quality of community mental health services for adults.  It was also rated as ‘fair’ for its use of resources (financial management and performance), an improvement on the rating of ‘weak’ from the previous year. In its summary of the year’s performance, the Healthcare Commission said that Devon Partnership NHS Trust ‘provided an excellent quality of service to patients, having made significant improvements compared to the previous year.  It managed its finances adequately and also made improvements.  In a recent survey of trusts in England, patients rated this organisation as satisfactory in terms of their overall experience’. Commenting on the findings, Chief Executive Iain Tulley said:  “These ratings are a very useful indicator of how organisations are faring overall and it is a testament to the efforts of all our staff that our services have been assessed as ‘excellent’.
 
“Like many parts of the NHS, we have undergone a good deal of change over the past few years and there is more to come as we strive to develop modern, flexible services that are and joined-up and easy to use.  Despite this challenging environment, our staff have never taken their eye off the ball when it comes to the quality of care they deliver and I offer my heartfelt congratulations to every one of them. “It is also encouraging that the Commission has recognised the significant effort that we have made to improve our financial performance at the same time as delivering first class services.  We still have work to do, but we are now much closer to achieving long-term financial stability and this will be an important factor as we move towards NHS Foundation Trust status – which will hopefully come in the early part of next year. “There’s no room for complacency, but the overall message from this year’s Health Check is that we are in pretty good shape and this is reassuring for our service users, their carers and families and our other stakeholders in health and social care.”   For more information, visit the Healthcare Commission’s website.