Health visitor target missed

The Health Visiting Service has missed its target for seeing newborn babies for the 12th month in a row, a report has said.

Staff shortages, uncontactable parents, babies needing intensive care and one “administrative error” are among the reasons the service fell short of its 95 per cent target in March.

Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust says it aims to carry out 19 out of 20 the new-birth visits within two weeks.

In a report before the trust’s board, Quality and Improvement Officer Chris Panayi wrote that the administrative error has been “investigated and resolved”, and staffing numbers have improved.

Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust’s Health Visiting Service has a target to complete 95 per cent of new-birth visits within 14 days of the baby being born.

It achieved a 90.5 per cent rate in March, and has yet to achieve the target every month since it was instigated in April 2018. It reached its highest rate, 93 per cent, in August, but fell to its lowest, 85 percent, in February.

Mr Panayi wrote: “Whilst March demonstrates an improving picture – a 5.5 per cent increase – the target for new-birth visits within 14 days has not been met.”

Fourteen visits took place outside of the timeframe.

In three of the cases, the visit couldn’t took place because the baby was in the neonatal unit and in two more cases the parents were uncontactable.
Mr Panayi described these delays as “unavoidable”.

However, three further cases were cause by a staff shortage and one was “due to an administrative error”.

“The administrative error has been investigated and resolved,” he wrote, adding that a recovery plan for the other avoidable cases “has resulted in improved recruitment filling some of the vacancies”.

Aside from the Health Visiting Service, Shropshire Community Health is responsible for Bishops Castle, Bridgnorth, Ludlow and Whitchurch Community Hospitals, Oswestry Health Centre and other community-based health services across Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin.

Its board received the report, which Mr Panayi co-authored with clinical leads Ceri Adamson and Sharon Simkin and quality and nursing head Angela Cook, when it met last week.