The Royal Cornwall Hospital has been rated as ‘requires improvement’ following CQC inspections.

In the past week, the Care Quality Commission published more than 100 reports on services which have been inspected. Among those is the Royal Cornwall Hospital, which continues to be rated as ‘requires improvement’ by the standards organisation.

Based in the Cornish capital, the hospital has been found to be underperforming in four areas, these include ‘Medial care – including older people’s care’, ‘surgery’, ‘urgent and emergency services’, and ‘responsive’.

Following the inspection to the hospital’s surgery services in February 2020, an inspector stated: “The service did not have enough staff to care for patients and keep them safe. Nursing staffing in the surgical division remained a challenge and had been for some time.”

During the inspection of its urgent and emergency services at the same time, it was noted that: “Not all staff had completed or refreshed mandatory and safeguarding training at the required level for their role. Safety checklists were being used although recording of ongoing monitoring was not as frequent as it should have been.

“The mental health assessment room did not meet required standards for patient safety.

“The service did not meet the Department of Health’s standard for patients to be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours of arrival, although it had been mostly better than the England average.”

However, despite this, the site has been rated as outstanding in ‘diagnostic imaging’ and good in all other areas.

The MP for St Ives, Andrew George has recently praised the hospital’s work and congratulated staff following the successful campaign to introduce a Women and Children’s Hospital at the Treliske site.

Mr George said: “We remain confident the government will give the go-ahead. Though this news isn’t a absolute foregone conclusion, I’m assured the government wouldn’t commit to expend so substantially at this stage if they were on the verge of turning it down. So, my congratulations to project managers, staff and campaigners on a first class effort.

“It was shocking to discover that the promised hospital had not been budgeted for by the previous Conservative government. So, I’m delighted the new government has got behind this and committed to backing essential enabling work to go ahead. I just hope government ministers will give us the final green light as soon as possible, enabling project managers to ensure it’s delivered as quickly as possible.”