by Peter Cook

The financial management of Medway Maritime Hospital has been rated highly in an annual report from quality watchdogs.

It was an improvement on last year’s “good” rating but Medway NHS Foundation Trust, which run the hospital, achieved only fair for quality of service, the same as the past four years.

The Care Quality Commission’s report was published this week.

Outgoing hospital chief executive Andy Horne said: “This is very good news for us as we have been assessed as performing strongly with a relatively low financial risk.

“We are pleased that we have maintained our rating of fair– for quality of services – during a year that has been very busy, particularly last winter when there was a very high demand for hospital services.

“We also recognise there are areas where we need to do better.” He said among these areas was the provision of more time for patients to consider various treatment options.

A patient literature co-ordinator had been appointed to clarify patient information for the most commonly undertaken procedures.

The trust had also failed on aspects of cleaning.

This was because four wards were re-categorised as 'high risk environments’ which have an increased cleaning requirement.

Four more members of staff had been recruited and trained specifically to remedy the situation and the trust had met the required standard since May.

NHS Medway, which provides community health services, including GPs, was also given a “fair” rating for the quality of its services, but a “good” rating for financial management, up from “fair” last year.

Chief executive Marion Dinwoodie said: “While I am pleased that we have achieved ratings of fair and good in Medway, we are aiming to do more to improve the health of our population.

“We are ensuring that people are getting fast diagnosis and treatment for cancer and improving care for people who have suffered strokes.

“These are improvements that will help us increase life expectancy for people in Medway and reduce the unacceptable inqualities in health that residents in Medway still experience.”