Stepping Hill Hospital received a recent visit from Peter Wyman CBE DL, Chair of the Care Quality Commission for a view of progress at Stockport NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the hospital and community services in Stockport.

Peter met with the trust’s Chair Adrian Belton and Chief Executive Louise Robson, together with Tom McGee, the chair of the Stockport Health and Wellbeing Board, Dr Cath Briggs, the Chair of Stockport Clinical Commissioning Group, and Councillor Jude Wells, the Cabinet Member for Health and Adult Care to discuss how partners are progressing with integrating health and social care services together to serve the local community.

Peter also took a tour of some of the hospital’s main services, including its A&E, acute medical unit and short stay unit, where he could see staff are aiming to improve patient flow and the patient experience. Stepping Hill Hospital’s A&E has recently seen major refurbishment, with a new reception area and additional consulting and treatment rooms.

The trust has been rated as ‘Requires Improvement’ by the CQC, but the last inspection from at the end of 2018 showed significant improvements in 12 areas including acute and community services compared to the previous year, and trust leaders are confident further improvements have been made since then.

Trust Chair Adrian Belton said “We were delighted to welcome Peter to our trust, so he could see at first hand the areas where we are progressing on our improvement journey, and how we are working with our health and social care partners to provide more integrated care for the community. He was very positive about the progress we have made, and it was good to engage with him on future plans for enhancing our services too.

Listening to colleagues describe that improvement journey made me feel immensely proud of what we and our teams have achieved, and their passion and commitment to the trust shone through in all they talked about.”