Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has shown further improvements in the national annual health check for 2008/09, published by independent health watchdog the Care Quality Commission on Thursday 15 October.
For 2008/09, Moorfields was assessed as ‘good’ for the quality of our services and ‘excellent’ – the highest possible score – for our financial management.  This compares favourably with our ‘fair’ rating for the quality of services in 2007/08 and demonstrates a consistent performance on financial management for which we were also rated as ‘excellent’ in 2007/08. 
“It is good news for patients and staff alike that our ratings with the Care Quality Commission continue to improve and now better reflect the high standards of clinical care that the majority of our patients experience,” says Moorfields’ chief executive John Pelly. 
“At the same time, I am committed to ensuring that we continue to improve in future so that our patients are assured of the excellent care and support they should expect from one of the world’s leading eye hospitals.”

Ends
Notes to editors:

About the annual health check:

• Full results for all NHS organisations are available from the Care Quality Commission at www.cqc.org.uk. 
• The annual health check is a national assessment carried out on all NHS organisations by the Care Quality Commission. 
• It looks at two main areas, quality of services and quality of financial management, and ranks all organisations as being excellent, good, fair or weak against both components.
• The quality of services element is broken down further in three sub-sets:
  -        Existing commitments, including waiting times in A&E and for inpatients
  -        National priorities, including targets on infection control, 18-week referral-to-treatment times, and NHS staff satisfaction
  -        Core standards, including safety, clinical cost and effectiveness, governance, patient focus, accessible and responsive care, care environment and amenities and public health.

About Moorfields

• Moorfields is one of the world’s leading eye hospitals, providing expertise in clinical care, research and education.  We have provided excellence in eye care for more than 200 years and we continue to be at the forefront of new breakthroughs and developments.   We are an integral part of one of the UK’s first academic health science centres, UCL Partners, and recently celebrated five years as one of the country’s first NHS foundation trusts.
• We treat the entire range of eye diseases, from common complaints to rare conditions which require treatments not available anywhere else in the UK.  We dealt with around 400,000 patient visits in 2008/09 at our main hospital base in London’s City Road and at 12 other sites in and around the capital, enabling us to provide expert care closer to patients’ homes.
• With our research partners at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, we run one of the largest ophthalmic research programmes in the world and have the highest measure of scientific productivity and impact in the world for our research activity. 
• For further information, please visit www.moorfields.nhs.uk.