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PELC improves CQC rating in outstanding 6 month turnaround

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Emergency Urgent Care Centre (EUCC) at the King George Hospital in IlfordFollowing a full inspection of the Emergency Urgent Care Centre (EUCC) at the King George Hospital in Ilford, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has, in an exceptional move, upgraded its rating across all its services up by two positions, just six months after being placed into ‘special measures’.

The EUCC is run by the Partnership of East London Co-operatives (PELC), a not-for-profit social enterprise delivering NHS integrated urgent care services (NHS 111, Clinical Assessment, GP Out of Hours and Urgent Care Centres), to more than 2million people across East London and West Essex.

In August 2018, the EUCC was placed into special measures by CQC following a rating of ‘inadequate’. In the six-month period that followed, PELC has raised its overall rating by two grades to ‘good’, improving in all of the individual five key areas assessed by the CQC; safety, effectiveness, care, responsiveness and leadership.

Immediately after the previous inspection, the team made important improvements that had a major impact to how the overall service was delivered. The new report recognised significant improvements made to the quality of care provided by the EUCC, including:

  • A strong focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation
  • Leadership and governance arrangements to support the delivery of high-quality and person-centred care
  • Monthly governance meetings to learn and improve from safety incidents
  • A staff bulletin to share learning and development
  • New protocols and training to support how clinicians assessed patients
  • Improvements to the physical layout to make it more conducive to maintaining patients’ privacy

Brian Jones, who took over as chief executive of PELC following the previous report, said:

Brian Jones, PELC“This is fantastic news for the King George’s EUCC and the communities we serve there. We are incredibly proud of our staff and the services we provide and the CQC findings are testament to the continued determination to provide the best possible care for patients.

“This is an incredible turnaround by the team achieved within the space of six short months. We are one of a very small number of organisations in England that have jumped from ‘Special Measures’ to an overall of ‘Good’ in such a short space of time.”

The EUCC is a walk-in NHS service based at the King George Hospital in Goodmays, Ilford, for patients whose condition is urgent enough that they cannot wait for the next GP appointment but who do not need emergency treatment at the emergency department (A&E).

Brian continued: “Our vision is to provide a patient-focused health system that delivers clinically excellent and cost-effective care with highly exceptional outcomes and patient satisfaction.

“This announcement highlights the considerable progress we have made at the King George Hospital. However, we will not rest here – we continue to work hard across all our services to provide high quality, responsive and personalised care for our patients.”