Poor ratings changed after Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust's appeal
Hospital bosses have had eight critical ratings issued by a health watchdog overturned.
Chiefs from the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust launched an appeal 13 months ago following a Care Quality Commission inspection.
The trust, which runs both New Cross and Cannock Chase Hospital, was ranked 'requires improvement' overall after the CQC visit.
Bosses lodged an appeal against ratings in 'safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led' categories, as well as the specific overall service ratings.
Of the 14 appealed areas, a total of eight were upgraded, the most the CQC has ever changed.
The new rankings mean more than 80 per cent of all services at the trust are now classed as 'good' or 'outstanding', a jump of five per cent from when the report was published in September 2015.
Chiefs said the updated rankings, following the original inspection in June last year, meant 'adult, children's and young people's services are rated outstanding', while 'children and young people's services is the first area at the trust to be ranked as overall outstanding'.
When the CQC report came out last year, the trust's chief nursing officer Cheryl Etches described it as 'an extremely disappointing report to read in terms of ratings'.
She said at the time: "A lot of people are struggling to understand how that plays out when the ratings have been good for some areas. We can only appeal on the process."
The 2015 report highlighted nursing staff vacancies as a risk to patient safety and uncovered night-time nurse shortages at New Cross, no access to free water in the outpatients department and staffing issues that were affecting patient safety.
After the updated rankings were unveiled yesterday, Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust chairman Jeremy Vanes said: "The appeal has improved our scores in six areas and two overall scores and shows that the appeal was justified and well received.
"The trust now fully accepts the revised ratings as a tribute to our staff and as a firm foundation for going forward.
"Although, like most comparable hospitals, the trust is still ranked as requiring improvement overall, we are very clear on the minority of areas where we must focus on improvement.
"We have continued to improve since the CQC visit in June 2015."
