HEALTH chiefs will appear before a scrutiny committee after a watchdog found Airedale Hospital required improvement.

Inspectors from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) found that staffing levels in many clinical areas at Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the hospital at Steeton, were regularly below strength.

Inspectors made an initial visit in March, which was followed up with two unannounced inspections.

In a report published in August, the CQC also found there were not enough doctors to meet national guidelines in the emergency department and too few specialist consultants in critical care.

And there had been a deterioration in the quality of some services, including medicine, since the previous inspection.

The commission said in its report that the trust needed improvement to be safe and well led.

But it did also highlight a number of positives – it praised the trust’s services as caring, effective and responsive.

Areas of outstanding practice identified included the telemedicine services – which provide remote video consultations around-the-clock between hospital staff and patients in their own homes, care homes and in prisons – and end-of-life care.

Today (Nov 17), hospital bosses will appear before Bradford Council’s health and social care scrutiny committee to discuss the findings.

They will set out the actions they are taking to make improvements.

A new report says the trust set out a 29-point quality improvement plan, and the timeframes for completion on each point were being “rigorously monitored”.

Helen Kelly, assistant director of health care governance at Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, said: “In this report the CQC has highlighted many examples of good practice within the trust and has also given us really useful feedback on areas where we need to improve.

“We have developed and are putting into practice a detailed and rigorous action plan to make sure this is achieved and this is scrutinised by both senior managers and clinicians.”

Chairman of the scrutiny committee, Councillor Vanda Greenwood (Lab, Windhill and Wrose), said: “The scrutiny committee will certainly be asking detailed questions in the areas that require improvement, such as safety and the overall leadership.

“We will be wanting to know what policies and procedures the trust is putting in place and the predicted outcomes we should expect.

“We acknowledge that some of the services are rated as good and we would not want to lose sight of that but it is our responsibility to ensure they are addressing these issues.”