TWO North-East hospitals have been told to make improvements, following an inspection earlier this year.

County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Darlington Memorial Hospital and University Hospital of North Durham, was inspected by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in February.

The CQC's report, published on Tuesday, said inspectors identified some concerns about the cleanliness and monitoring arrangements for infection control within the trust's accident and emergency (A&E) departments.

Trust chief executive Sue Jacques was upbeat in the wake of the report and said efforts to make the necessary improvements began shortly after the inspection in February.

She set out plans to improve the trust's CQC rating from its current level 'requires improvement' to 'outstanding' within two years.

Inspectors found that staff were caring and compassionate, and treated people with dignity and respect.

They also noted that there was effective communication and collaboration between multi-disciplinary teams.

Doctors, nurses and other health professionals worked well together, the CQC found.

Staff reported that there was a strong culture of learning and improvement and training and development was actively encouraged.

Inspectors have since reviewed A&E cleanliness during a separate unannounced inspection and found that action had been taken by the trust to ensure that all equipment in A&E departments was clean.

Other problems included examples of patient care records not being fully completed and paperwork on some wards, such as fluid balance charts and risk assessments, were not consistently completed.

Inspectors raised concerns about staffing levels across a number of services. There was a heavy reliance on bank and agency staff to maintain safe staffing levels.

These were among several areas that needed to improve.

CQC chief inspector of hospitals, Professor Sir Mike Richards said: “Our inspectors found a number of areas of good practice across all sites with services going the extra mile to improve the support that they provided to people.

"However, we saw other services where more needed to be done to make sure that care and treatment consistently met the required standard."

Ms Jacques said: "The CQC report is a valuable source of information providing us with feedback not just from independent assessors but also from our patients and staff.

“It was pleasing that the inspection recognised our caring and compassionate staff and the respect and dignity with which our patients are treated.

"Across the organisation, we scored ‘good’ in 80 per cent of the indicators and received a ‘good’ overall rating for our community services.

"However, we recognise there are areas where improvements can be made.

“Looking at how we have performed relative to other similar trusts that have been inspected, an overall score of ‘good’ is well within our reach and we aim to be ‘outstanding’ – which is what we want to be offering to our patients.”