New Cross Hospital whistleblower: Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust statement in full

"The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust is an organisation that continuously strives to provide high quality, safe care for its patients, and to improve patient experience and outcomes.

The trust acknowledges the findings of the report, none of which are related to any issues around patient safety or patient care or patient experience.

The report relates to events from over four years ago. It does not reflect adequately the significant information provided by the trust to Verita at its request.

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The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust takes whistleblowing extremely seriously and would always encourage any member of staff, or patient, to come forward if they have any concerns at all.

We have reviewed our whistleblowing procedures and policies in line with national guidelines and have had a new HR leadership team in place since 2014.

In 2015 we asked an independent body, CHKS, to review our clinical coding service with regard to progress and achievements since 2011/12. CHKS is a leading provider of healthcare intelligence and quality improvement services.

CHKS found that the coding department had made improvements in all areas of coding and the department continues to implement the recommendations they made, most of which are now in place.

The Clinical coding team has just this week been recognised as being in the top five clinical coding teams for Date Quality in England by the CHKS.

Since 2012 the trust has continued to perform strongly and has had a number of independent reviews all of which attest to a good culture with good governance.

Indeed the CQC have made two inspections since 2012 and assessed our senior leadership as good on each occasion.

Staff satisfaction is also high – in a recent NHS staff survey we were in the top 20 per cent of all trusts in the country.

We are a high performing trust, with excellent relationships with our patients, our staff and our stakeholders, and we will continue to strive to provide excellent outcomes for the people we care for.

Our dedicated nurses, doctors and support teams will continue to put patients at the heart of everything we do.

The trust will work with NHSI around the proposed Governance review across the organisation. We welcome it and look forward to the report in due course.

Sandra Haynes-Kirkbright remains an employee of the organisation."