Medway NHS Foundation Trust “still has more work to do” following a recent inspection.

Health watchdog The Care Quality Commission (CQC) visited Medway hospital in April and May and has today released its latest report, rating the trust as “requires improvement”.

Inspectors checked in on six core services: emergency and urgent care, medicine (including older persons care), surgery, critical care, outpatients and diagnostic imaging.

CQC also looked specifically at management and leadership to answer the key question: Is the trust well led?

The trust was rated requires improvement for whether its services were safe, responsive and well-led but good for whether its services were effective and caring

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Amanda Stanford, said: “Medway NHS Foundation Trust has come a long way in the last five years and I am pleased to see that the team has implemented a number of changes since our last inspection in 2016.

“However, there is still a lot more work to be done particularly in ensuring a culture of safety exists across the whole of the trust.

“We found that the senior leadership team had the ability to ensure improvements could be delivered and to address any risks to performance.

“Having driven some real improvement it has taken some time to identify the next step. The board now need to concentrate on the strategic direction of the trust and allow staff to continue to embed the operational improvements.”

Trust chief executive Lesley Dwyer said: “We are pleased we have retained our ‘requires improvement’ rating despite a very challenging winter.

“The safety and quality of care we provide to the people of Medway and Swale is our number one priority, so we are delighted that the CQC has noted our continued and sustained improvements to patient safety in their report.

“Of course we would have liked to have seen more progress, but given Medway’s history this was bound to be a challenge.

“However, we are pleased to be able to say that Medway is a safe organisation; this is something that our communities expect and deserve.

“The CQC’s findings reflect our own self-assessments, which were carried out before the inspections.

“We know we have made some excellent progress over the last two years, but also that we still have more to do before we can say we are brilliant.

“Our Better, Best, Brilliant improvement programme is already helping us address those areas where we needed more focus.

“We must now move at pace to transform services.”

In March 2017, the trust was brought out of special measures after being given the rating in 2013.

Ms Dwyer, who is leaving the trust later this year, said: “We have already acknowledged the significant long-standing financial challenges we have and we are working with our partners to address these as part of a system-wide approach.

“We are also focussing on improving our operational performance so the experience of our patients is improved, while at the same time planning for the future.

“The CQC has recognised the stability and capability of our leadership team and with our fantastic committed staff here at Medway, we have exactly the right people in place to take us to ‘brilliant’.

“Many of the concerns raised in the report have already been addressed by the Trust.

“An action plan has been produced and we look forward to working with the CQC to make further improvements in response to the report.”

The trust was praised for its work to reduce the number of falls and improve patient flow through the building, and for its dementia buddies scheme.