Care Quality Commission Lifts Royal Surrey Registration Conditions

Dr Christopher Tibbs, Medical Director and Director of Infection Prevention and Control said:

"I am very pleased to announce that the Royal Surrey is now fully registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and all conditions have been lifted.

"This follows the disappointing news at the beginning of April that the CQC were placing conditions on our registration. We made it clear to the CQC that we believed we were fully compliant with the Hygiene Code at the end of March and have spent the last few weeks in discussions with the Commission about lifting the conditions on our registration.

"The CQC carried out an inspection of the Trust last week and were satisfied that we were fully compliant with the code.

"All of our staff have worked incredibly hard over the last few years to tackle infection and maintain very high standards of hygiene and cleanliness. This has led to dramatic falls in both our rates of MRSA bloodstream infections and C.difficile.  The CQC inspection team were able see for themselves last week, the high standards that we are all committed to delivering for our patients week in, week out.

"This commitment to infection control and protecting our patients from infection will continue to be our main priority and we hope to see further falls in our rates of infection during the coming year."

The number of hospital acquired MRSA bloodstream infections fell to just nine during 2008/09 compared to 24 during 2007/08.  This is a fall of 62.5% in just one year, which is well below the national average.

The Royal Surrey also had the lowest C. difficile rate in Surrey for the first three quarters of 2008 and between July and September 2008 the lowest rates of C difficile in the South East Coast region.  There were only 77 cases during the whole of the last year, compared to 141 cases in 2007/08.