Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is an acute hospital trust in Cheshire. It runs Leighton Hospital in Crewe, Victoira Infirmary in Northwich and Elmhurst Intermediate Care Centre in Winsford.

Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (MCHFT) became registered as a Foundation Trust on 1 April 2008, following authorisation by the independent regulator, Monitor.

Services are provided to a population of approximately 300,000 living in and around Alsager, Crewe, Congleton, Knutsford, Middlewich, Nantwich, Northwich, Sandbach and Winsford. The Trust is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC), without conditions, and provides a comprehensive range of acute, maternity, child health and intermediate care services, through four Clinical Divisions. The Trust’s Estates & Facilities Division is a Non-Clinical Division that supports the Clinical Divisions by providing a range of services to maintain and improve the environment whilst the Corporate Division delivers a full range of back office functions.

Achievements

Top 40 Hospital

In May 2014, the Trust was named as one of the best in the country for the third year in a row.

The CHKS 40Top Hospitals award is based on the evaluation of 22 key performance indicators and covers important areas such as safety, clinical effectiveness, health outcomes, efficiency, patient experience and quality of care.

In 2012, the Trust also received the ‘Most Improved Trust in the Country’ award from CHKS, recognising the progress that the staff and services have made in recent years.

Reducing Mortality Rates

In recent years Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust had been classed as having "higher than expected" mortality rates, and work has been taking place over the past few years to identify and address the causes of this.

On July 30, 2014, the Health and Social Care Information Centre published its latest mortality data, with the Trust now back in the “as expected” range for the Summary Hospital-level Mortality Indicator (SHMI).

This improved position is the result of the extensive work that has been undertaken by clinical teams at the Trust. It is expected that this figure will be reduced further in the next release of the data in October 2014 when a the correction of a data recording issue will take effect.

Alongside SHMI, the Trust also uses another national model of mortality measurement - the Risk Adjusted Mortality Index (RAMI). MCHFT’s RAMI has been better than peer for a number of months now and has improved consistently over the past three years. The latest RAMI figures, covering the 12 months to July 2014, also suggest that the Trust is performing better than the national average.

New Theatres and Critical Care Facilities

Spring 2014 saw the first patients treated in the new Theatre suite at Leighton Hospital. Part of the £22.8million project which also saw the creation of a new Critical Care unit, the new Theatres offer opportunities to further develop existing ways of working in a way that will maximise the benefits of new theatre designs such as barn theatres and integrated theatres.

Maternity Services

Women having babies at the Trust are provided with some of the safest care in the country, according to an external assessment which awarded the Maternity service the best possible rating. The Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts (CNST) awarded the Trust with Level 3 status after scoring 48 out of 50 against indicators which included the care of women in labour, screening of their mental health, whether they are supported to breastfeed, staffing levels, and the number of incidents and complaints. The Trust is enormously proud of this achievement.

The Maternity Unit at Leighton Hospital has undergone significant refurbishment works over the past few years, including a fully reconfigured Labour Ward and the introduction of a new Midwifery-Led Unit designed to improve the overall birth experience for low-risk pregnancies. The Trust has been awarded the Baby Friendly Stage 2 accreditation from UNICEF. Baby Friendly focuses on staff knowledge and skills to support families with their infant feeding choices. The work undertaken by the Trust’s Infant Feeding Team has led to improved health outcomes for mothers and their babies, with the highest breast feeding rates and lowest smoking rates during pregnancy in eight years. A national CQC patient survey rated the Trust as better than most others for the labour and birth elements of the pregnancy journey, scoring a total of 9.1 out of 10 (just 0.3 points of the highest score nationally).

Relationship with private sector

The Trust uses BMI Healthcare's South Cheshire Hospital to help with elective surgery capacity problems, usually in the winter. The two buildings are connected by a covered corridor.^[1]

See also

• List of hospitals in England
• List of NHS trusts

References