England’s Chief Inspector of Hospitals has welcomed improvements at South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust – which serves all of Wiltshire – following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). Overall, it rated the service good – and outstanding for being caring.
A team of inspectors from the CQC visited South Western Ambulance Service in June and July to check the quality of two core services: emergency and urgent care and the emergency-999 centre.
The CQC also looked specifically at management and leadership to answer the key question: Is the trust well led?
Inspectors have found improvements, although there are still some areas where the CQC has told the trust that further improvements are necessary to ensure that patients receive consistently safe care and ambulances reach them on time.
The trust is now rated overall as ‘Good’ for the quality of its services. The trust is also rated as ‘Outstanding’ for being caring, ‘Good’ for being effective, responsive to people’s needs and well led and ‘Requires Improvement’ for being safe.
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