Healthcare Commission announces ‘biggest ever hygiene inspection’

The Healthcare Commission has announced the launch of its biggest ever healthcare-associated infection programme which will see the unannounced inspection of 120 NHS trusts over the next 12 months.

As part of the programme, the commission will check that trusts are complying with the hygiene code set out by the government in order to manage MRSA, Clostridium difficile and other healthcare-associated infections.

Breaches of these guidelines detected by the commission will result in the trust being required to formulate an action plan to deal with these concerns, with failure to do so being met by the issuing of an improvement notice.

Inadequate response to an improvement notice will potentially lead to the imposition of “special measures” from the secretary of state for health to drive improvement in the trust.

Anna Walker, chief executive of the Healthcare Mission, said: “Boards at all acute trusts must take notice: chances are you’re going to be assessed against the hygiene code, so make sure you’re ready.”

She added that the commission hopes the “in-depth” inspections are not aiming to “catch trusts out”, but instead hopes that all measures of the hygiene code are properly in place to protect the public and patients from hospital-acquired infections.

Andrew Lansley, shadow health secretary welcomed these inspections but described it as “odd” that such measures had not been introduced earlier.