HOSPITAL staff are celebrating after three years of hard work have helped to improve their quality rating.

In 2016 a report published by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) rated Gobowen’s Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital as requiring improvement.

Three years later, the site has been inspected once again with the CQC recognising an improvement across the board at the hospital, rating the service as good overall.

The report also rated the ‘caring’ aspect of the hospital as outstanding.

A range of changes made at the hospital over the past three years have seen a positive change in the trust’s rating, which is something the hospital’s chief executive officer has put down to the excellence of his staff.

Mark Brandreth took on the CEO role shortly after the 2016 report was published, and said he was always confident of the hospital being recognised for its improvement.

He said: “The past three years have been about improving the culture of the hospital. I see part of my job as being there for the staff and making our hospital a vibrant, prosperous, exciting and high-quality place to come to work so they can do their job to the best of their ability.

“They do their job brilliantly – I fully believe I have some of the best staff in the NHS without question.

“If I am able to set the conditions for them to be able to do their job well then that’s great.”

Mr Brandreth identified the key aspects the hospital focused on following the 2016 report, and how staff across all areas of the hospital have impacted the rating.

“We’ve focused on the outcomes and quality of care we deliver,” he said.

“We’ve looked closely at a patient’s experience – what does it feel like for them when they come to the hospital? So, can our patients park and do we help them park? What the food is like here, is it clean? These are all things you can measure without knowing much at all about medicine.

“Looking at the outcome, we have looked at whether or not we are delivering the care which makes positive change to people’s lives.

“For example, if I have a bad knee and I used to walk my dog, but I no longer can, I want to know that once I have my new knee, I can walk my dog again.

“For a patient, things like that are the most important for the patient – we want to get rid of the pain so we can continue doing what we want to.”

With the report fresh in the mind of staff at the hospital, Mr Brandreth is already looking ahead to make more improvements as the hospital aims to achieve an outstanding rating next time around.

One aspect of the report which did not improve on the 2016 report was the critical care unit at the hospital, and despite the unit being a smaller part of the service it provides, Mr Brandreth is determined to bring it up to the same level as the rest of the service.

He said: “People with spinal injuries can often be here for six months at a time or more which is an extremely long time.

“Children are often with us for a matter of days – but in both instances you’re caring for the family.

“Every child comes with relatives, so if they’re anxious then the child is often going to be even more anxious.

“So, you’re caring for more than just the child to ensure they all stay happy.

“Similarly, with patients in the spinal unit – if you live in Birmingham and your partner’s here, we’re also looking after you, your children and maybe even more family than that.

“We spend a lot of time talking with families and discussing what’s happening with the patient.

“We only have a four-bedded high dependency unit, so if we compare that with Shrewsbury, Telford or Chester, they might have upwards of 25 urgent care beds. We only operate on people who are generally well overall, we don’t tend to operate on people who have come through A&E and are desperately sick.

“The good thing is I don’t think that is too hard to fix.

“Looking at the grand scheme of things, it’s four beds out of 200, it’s a relatively small and discreet area of our world.

“If we were running a big district general hospital it would be much more of significant issue for us.

“We’ve already started working with the staff with regards to what we need to do. We know there’s always more we can do.

“Going forward, we obviously want to maintain outstanding for caring but also, we obviously want outstanding across the board.

“What we’re really about here is trying to become world class.”