TODAY it was announced that Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust was one of 11 hospital trusts placed into special measures following Sir Bruce Keogh's Review Into The Quality Of Care And Treatment Provided By 14 Hospital Trusts In England.

Here, Anne Eden, chief executive of the trust, gives her response to the review:

“We welcome the report by Sir Bruce Keogh into the quality of care and treatment at Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, as part of a national review into 14 trusts, and take its recommendations very seriously.

“We were encouraged that, overall, there were no significant issues with the safety or quality of care provided at our hospitals.

"In particular, the review team spoke to many patients who were ‘unreservedly complimentary about the quality of nursing care they had experienced’. The team also said they met ‘some outstanding and dedicated’ staff.

“However, there were too many instances where patients and staff said we got it wrong and we accept that it is not good enough. It is important for us to learn from, as an organisation and within clinical teams, to understand what we need to do differently into the future.

"We will be looking at all patient complaints raised through this review to see whether they are already being dealt with or to identify any further action we could take. Patient safety and compassionate care are an absolute focus for us.

“The review process has recognised that the actions we have already put in place to improve safety, quality and the patient experience are a step in the right direction.

"The focus now is to ensure our approach is standardised across our wards and services, and that we share the learning from our exemplar areas. We also look forward to working closely with any organisations, identified by the NHS Trust Development Authority, who will support us in our ongoing development.

“We recognise that in some areas, such as 7-day working, there is more we - like the rest of the country - need to do to ensure comprehensive consultant cover across the week and through the weekend. This is something we cannot achieve in isolation and have begun talking to our GP and social care colleagues about the support they can provide.

“A multi-agency risk summit was held last week where we worked with national experts and colleagues from other parts of the NHS and social care to put in place the next stage of our programme to improve the quality of care for our patients. Everyone has a role to play and we have clear actions to take.

"Six main themes were identified and we will take urgent action in those areas including:

- Strengthening our governance processes

- Building resilient urgent care pathways

- Developing a more open and transparent approach to gathering real-time feedback from patients

- Bringing together all improvement projects into a Trustwide Patient Safety Strategy which includes looking at end of life pathways and continuing work to understand the causal factors associated with high HSMR in our integrated trust

- Working with colleagues across Buckinghamshire to ensure out-of-hours support is working well and effectively communicated

- Reviewing the recruitment, retention and engagement of staff.

“We will move at pace to ensure swift and robust delivery of these actions. The action plan will be reviewed again in October, and we will monitor progress closely with local commissioners and the Trust Development Authority, reporting monthly to the Trust Board in public.

“I want to ensure that we involve patients and the public in our pursuit of improving quality, and will be seeking regular feedback to ensure that the actions we take are making a real difference to the patient experience.

“I know that staff at Buckinghamshire Healthcare work very hard to deliver good quality care, day-in, day-out. On occasions we don’t always get it right, but there is an absolute commitment to continue improving, and to ensure safe services for local people.

We have a lot to be proud of, with really low infection rates, excellent outcomes for cardiac, stroke and vascular patients and innovative community services for example. We now need to build on this to ensure patient care is consistently great across all our sites and services.

"Every patient counts.”