DORSET County Hospital has been urged to work with the county’s other hospitals after inspectors found it ‘requires improvement’.

As reported in the Echo, the trust that runs the hospital was judged to require improvement following an inspection in March by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Healthwatch Dorset has called on the hospital to make changes.

As well as DCH, Poole Hospital and the Royal Bournemouth Hospital have also been rated ‘requires improvement’ in the past 12 months.

Martyn Webster, Healthwatch Dorset manager, said: “The feedback about services at Dorset County Hospital that local people have shared with us at Healthwatch Dorset so far this year has been mostly positive, with patients and families wanting to put on record their appreciation and thanks. But we have also heard from a number of people who have had appointments and/or procedures cancelled, sometimes at the last minute.

“We’ve also been contacted by people raising concerns about the lack of staff available and the problems in finding end of life care and support. This is reflected in the CQC’s inspection report. Of particular concern to us is the poor rating that the CQC has given to end of life care at the hospital and we would like to see as a matter of urgency what plans the hospital has to remedy that and the other areas identified as requiring improvement.

“Our message to all three hospitals is - in planning for the improvements you need to make in response to your CQC inspections, we urge you not to do so in isolation but as part of your planning for closer collaboration with each other, so as to ensure the best possible services are available to everyone in Dorset, wherever they live.”

Responding to the comments. a DCH spokesman said: “We value feedback and support from our stakeholders, however we would want to point out that the CQC found that our end of life care services were rating as good for the actual care provided by staff and many of the comments from patients and relatives have reflected this finding.

“We acknowledge that we do need to improve the auditing of our end of life care programme so that we are able to provide the CQC and commissioners with the assurance that our policies and protocols supporting the end of life care have been fully implemented across the hospital.

“We will be working with a number of stakeholders as part of the improvement work to understand how we can work together with primary care to ensure that patients who are coming towards the end of their lives can be cared for in their preferred place of care which often is not in a hospital setting.”

The trust added that it is aware some areas need more staff and that it is continuing to try and attract more as it is part way through a recruitment process