{"id":642872,"date":"2025-12-19T20:26:20","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T20:26:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/642872\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T20:26:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T20:26:20","slug":"health-chief-criticises-inconsistent-assessments-as-trust-puts-patients-before-metrics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/642872\/","title":{"rendered":"Health chief criticises ‘inconsistent’ assessments as trust ‘puts patients before metrics’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hospital’s lowly position in contrast to ‘good’ CQC ratings\"UHCWNew tables have contradicted UHCW’s CQC ratings(Image: Joe Giddens\/PA Wire)<\/p>\n

The boss of University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW)<\/a> has criticised new performance league tables even though the latest version showed a massive improvement for his own organisation. Andy Hardy, chief executive of the UHCW NHS<\/a> Trust, highlighted inconsistencies with the new system particularly when compared to the ratings issued by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) which have been in place since 2010.<\/p>\n

The Local Democracy Reporting Service reported how the trust had been ranked 132 out of 134 acute trusts in the first batch of results. The latest tables have seen it climb up to 96th.<\/p>\n

Speaking at a meeting of Coventry City Council\u2019s<\/a> health and social care scrutiny board held at the hospital, he said: \u201cExplaining the league tables and how they are formulated is not straightforward. The present government believes, and I don\u2019t disagree with this, that we should have greater transparency in public services so that people know more about them. That is great if it is transparent and easy to understand \u2013 and these league tables are neither of those.<\/p>\n

Read More: Driverless trams on the cards for Coventry city centre<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of how the organisation is normally assessed, we have CQC inspections. We had three reports issued to us on 15th August which gave us an overall good for University Hospital, an overall good for the site at St Cross and there was an organisation-wide led report that also gave us a good. We had three reports all giving us good and then, three weeks later, you get a league position of 132nd out of 134. How is that consistent?\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Hardy added that it was now clear that metrics used in that first round will be changed and he also explained that the trust carried out regular surveys of staff and patients to hear their views.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been very clear in saying that we are not going to be playing the game around trying to hit metrics,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe believe in doing the right thing for patients. We have seen that in the NHS <\/a>and many other public sector arenas where organisations have driven down certain avenues.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have just had an updated league table and we went up 36 places. I think that raises further questions about the credibility of these league tables when you can move up that much in any one go. I can say with confidence that we will move down in Q3 because we are doing what\u2019s right for patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

Councillors at the scrutiny board meeting were told that there had been a number of areas of improvement since the first table was publish including a significant reduction in waiting lists. It was also noted that UHCW was the best in the region for ambulance turnaround times and that there had been no \u2018corridor care\u2019 in the hospital since 2019.<\/p>\n

The board agreed to a suggestion from Cllr Christine Thomas that the cabinet member for public health, Cllr Kam Caan, be urged to write to the Health Secretary to address the league tables and particularly the fact that those at the top were all specialist centres with no A&E departments which skewed the system. She said: \u201cWe are comparing apples with pears here and it is absolutely not fair.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hospital’s lowly position in contrast to ‘good’ CQC ratingsNew tables have contradicted UHCW’s CQC ratings(Image: Joe Giddens\/PA Wire)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4316],"tags":[166178,105,4348,197522,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-642872","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-coventry-city-council","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-uhcw-nhs-trust","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115748116510640394","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}