Media Release: 16^th July 2009

It’s official…. Birmingham Women’s is one of the cleanest hospitals in the country

Birmingham Women’s Hospital is one of cleanest hospitals in the country. It has had no cases of MRSA bacteraemia or C-difficile for more than six years and has been given a clean bill of health by the Care Quality Commission (former Healthcare Commission).

The Care Quality Commission recently made an unannounced visit to the Trust to form a ‘snap shot’ of the trust’s activities related to infection prevention and control. This enabled them to identify issues that could be a potential risk to patients’ safety or that could affect their experience of care.

Debbie Mead, HCAI assessments manager, said: "Our visit was unannounced so we could see the hospital as a patient or visitor would. We looked at a number of measures that support the government regulations on the prevention and control of healthcare-associated infections.

"I'm pleased to say that the trust had systems for infection prevention and control in place and we did not identify a need for improvement on the inspection. We encourage staff at the trust to maintain this vigilance and to keep up the focus on healthcare-associated infections."

Chief Executive, Steve Peak commented, “This is fantastic news for the Trust and demonstrates that we are maintaining high standards in the prevention and control of infection. I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to teams across the organisation for their diligence and hard work in this vital area of health care.

As is always the case, we want to maintain this enviable record and so must not rest on our laurels and we will continue to work hard to ensure that patient safety is paramount.”

The Trust recently received the results of the PEAT (Patient Environment Action Team) Inspection which have, for the 6^th year running, rated the Trust as being‘excellent’for Environment and Food with an added category this year for Privacy and Dignity of which we also received‘excellent’.

We are just one of four Trusts out of 40 within the West Midlands to achieve this rating which looks at how well we are performing in areas including food, cleanliness, infection control and patient environment.

For further information please contact Maria Mcleod on 07870 587759.

This page was last modified on Thu Jun 10 2010