Two Newcastle hospitals have been issued with a warning after an inspection by a health watchdog found a number of failures in their mental health care.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) carried out an unannounced inspection of medicine, surgery, and critical care at the Freeman Hospital and the Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI) in November and December last year. Inspectors also looked at urgent and emergency care and maternity services at the RVI.
The inspection focused on the quality and safety of care provided to people with a mental health need, a learning disability, or autism across all of these services. Following this inspection, the CQC served the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust with a warning notice which said that the trust needed to make "significant and immediate improvements in the quality of care being provided."
