The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has noted the improvements of Croydon University Hospital maternity services after an inspection in December 2022.

The maternity services, which are run by Croydon Health Services NHS Trust, have been changed from requires improvement to good.

However, ratings for both Croydon University Hospital as a whole and Croydon Health Services NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, are unchanged by this inspection and remain at the 'requires improvement' rating.

During the inspection, CQC found that the maternity services had “enough staff on each shift to keep woman and babies safe” and had held “regular and effective multidisciplinary meetings”.

The report states that “staff had training in key skills, worked well together for the benefit of women, understood how to protect women from abuse, and managed safety well”.

It reports that the non-executive director (NED) “seemed knowledgeable about the problems facing the service” which included recruiting, retention, and ensuring that women's perspectives were promoted.

The CQC has recommended that the trust should continue to address the high vacancy and turnover rates in maternity staffing.

The maternity safety champions meeting minutes showed a “healthy discussion regarding safety issues, performance and feedback”.

However, it was highlighted that there were still some issues with the storage of some medicines, but the CQC reported that the hospital was working to improve how they are stored, including ensuring medicines fridge temperatures were monitored and recorded in line with the trust requirements.

Carolyn Jenkinson, CQC’s Deputy Director of Secondary and Specialist Healthcare, said: “When we visited maternity department at Croydon University Hospital, we were very pleased to find that safety had improved including the management of incidents and learning lessons from them.

“The team engaged well with black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) women and staff and worked together to see how services could be further improved."

She said the hospital saw that staff at all levels were committed to continually improving the service.

She added: “This included working with women especially those in black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) community to plan more effective services and were committed to making any necessary improvements.

“Its leaders were focused on the needs of women receiving care and people could access the service when they needed.

“There were issues with some aspects of the service, relating to the storage of some medicines, however the team were aware of this and had started to make changes to improve how these were stored.

“We will continue to monitor the service closely, including through future inspections, to ensure women are receiving a high standard of care.”