\n Northern Care Alliance NHS Trust, which also runs Salford Royal Hospital, Rochdale Infirmary and Fairfield Hospital in Bury, is embroiled in industrial action and has come under fire after its own board papers revealed dozens of patients died or \u2018came to harm\u2019 due to treatment delays and serious errors made by staff working under extreme pressure.\n<\/p>\n
\n The latest inspection by healthcare watchdog the Care Quality Commission (CQC) covered surgical services at Salford Royal and follows a warning notice issued in October 2025.\n<\/p>\n
\n Inspectors found 12 breaches of legal regulations, including regarding safe care and treatment, governance and staffing. However, they said improvements had been made that mean the service is considered to be complying with the warning notice.\n<\/p>\n
\n Surgical services are still suffering from staff shortages and low employee confidence, while cancelled care remains a concern, the report showed.\n<\/p>\n
\n Salford Royal Hospital was again told it needs to make improvements by the CQC. A visit to its surgical departments saw the service, run by the Northern Care Alliance NHS Trust, again rated \u2018requires improvement\u2019.\n<\/p>\n
\n Inspectors found 12 breaches of legal regulations, including regarding safe care and treatment, governance and staffing. The report is the latest in a series of challenges facing the trust and follows a Section 29A warning issued to Northern Care Alliance in October 2025.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n However, inspectors said the improvements they saw during their latest visit meant the service is considered to be complying with the notice. Surgical services are still suffering from staff shortages and low employee confidence, while cancelled care remains a concern.\n<\/p>\n
\n Some 501 operations were cancelled for non-clinical reasons on the day of surgery between September 2025 and May 2026. The most frequent reasons included list overruns due to the complexity of procedures (115) and unavailable ward beds (105).\n<\/p>\n
\n Staff said pre-operative assessments were sometimes unavailable or incomplete, leading to delays and cancellations. A reduction in pre-operative staff also increased the number of delays. Some 79 incidents were reported between September 2025 and May 2026 related to staff shortages, most of which were because of cancelled non-emergency procedures.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n Some staff reported issues around bullying and harassment, spoke negatively about the support they received from line managers, and said they still felt reluctant to raise concerns because they feared these would be dismissed or lead to punitive actions from senior leaders.\u00a0\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n A reduced number of violent or aggressive incidents towards staff by patients had been reported following implementation of a new collaborative, however.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n There had not been any significant improvement relating to patient length of stay, readmissions following surgery and around patient discharge processes, inspectors continued.\u00a0 Additional concerns were raised over staff training, with gaps in life support training compliance and just 12.8pc of staff completing dementia training.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n Patients and relatives spoke positively about staff, however. People said they felt \u2018comfortable\u2019 asking for help and said they responded promptly.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n NCA deputy chief nursing officer Karen Coverley said the trust was pleased the CQC had found improvements and had rated the service \u2018good\u2019 for caring.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n She added: \u201cThe CQC noted we\u2019ve sufficiently met the requirements of the warning notice they issued us last year and that we\u2019ve made progress in areas, including staffing arrangements on wards, safeguarding, patient safety processes, surgical safety compliance and the management of deteriorating patients. The safety and quality of care for our patients remains our absolute priority and we will keep our full focus on the improvement we know we still need to do.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe CQC\u2019s inspection took place less than two months after the introduction of our new clinically led operating model. While we have made progress, we recognise that some of the changes needed are significant and will take time to fully embed across the organisation.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cOur regulatory actions and improvement requirements form part of a single integrated improvement plan, which is subject to regular oversight and scrutiny. This allows us to track progress, address areas of concern and ensure improvements are embedded and sustained.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe will continue to work closely with the CQC, NHS England and our system partners to deliver further improvements and ensure our patients receive safe, high-quality care.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Newbury Green Medical Practice, in Rigby Street, was another service to receive a \u2018good\u2019 rating. The GP was judged to offer safe care in a \u2018visibly clean\u2019 environment.\n<\/p>\n
\n The service \u2018actively supported\u2019 patients to improve their health through community-based initiatives. Around 200 referrals had been made and these contributed positively to patient outcomes, including supporting a homeless person to secure stable accommodation.\n<\/p>\n
\n Around 92pc of patients responding to a national survey felt staff were \u2018good\u2019 at treating them with care and concern. Two patients told inspectors the service has always treated patients with kindness, compassion and dignity.\n<\/p>\n
\n However, there were gaps in training and recruitment documents for some staff, including basic life support training and incomplete identity checks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Northern Care Alliance NHS Trust, which also runs Salford Royal Hospital, Rochdale Infirmary and Fairfield Hospital in Bury,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":793183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-793182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}