A HOSPITAL must make urgent improvements after inspectors found "serious concerns" surrounding patient safety.

Priory Hospital Burgess Hill must improve two of its wards after inspectors from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) found several problems in the quality of care.

The Amy Johnson and Michael Shepherd wards inspected did not have enough experienced and skilled staff to manage all the risks on the wards, the body deemed.

Inspectors also found that staff were not consistently undertaking risk assessments of all patients’ identified risks and they did not clearly identify the severity of these risks.

The commission required the hospital to submit information explaining how it would make immediate improvements.

Priory Hospital Burgess Hill provided an action plan and decided to close two hospital wards, the female psychiatric intensive care and female personality disorder wards, in order to ensure it could staff the two remaining wards safely.

Karen Bennett-Wilson, CQC’s head of hospital inspection, said:

“Following our inspection of Priory Hospital Burgess Hill, we were concerned about the quality of care, so we issued the hospital with a letter demanding immediate improvements be put in place, or we would impose conditions upon them to restrict their activity.

“We found a number of concerns relating to patient safety on both the Amy Johnson and Michael Shepherd wards and we told the Priory Hospital Burgess Hill it must make urgent improvements. This includes having appropriate systems in place that support staff to keep patients safe.

“Following the inspection, we gave the provider feedback on our findings, highlighting concerns which required an urgent response. The management team knows what it must do to improve its services. In the meantime, we will continue to monitor the hospital closely and will not hesitate to take action if Priory Hospital Burgess Hill fails to make the necessary improvements.”

As CQC felt the current overall rating of good was not reflective of the care that was being delivered at the hospital, the rating of good has been suspended until a full inspection can take place.

A spokesman for the hospital said: “We take the CQC’s findings very seriously, and we have taken a number of measures to address the issues identified by the inspection.

"We have reviewed our risk assessment procedures using external clinical quality leads, and Priory’s quality team continues to work with the hospital to ensure that everyone at the site follows best practice.

"We have reviewed our governance structure around patient feedback and the way we record incidents.

"We hold monthly lessons learned meetings, and disseminate their findings to all staff. IT issues at the time of the inspection have subsequently been resolved.

"Because of recent staffing pressures caused by the shortage of registered nurses in the region, we have had to react quickly and take the regrettable decision to close two of the hospital wards, including the Amy Johnson ward.

"We took this step to ensure our patients continue to receive the high quality care they deserve in a safe environment.

"We continue to invest heavily in efforts to attract appropriate nursing and other clinical staff, and we are confident the hospital will soon regain its ‘good’ CQC rating.”