The inspection in June 2024 was carried out in response to concerns about access and flow, delayed discharges, staffing shortages, culture and waiting times.

Stuart Dunn, CQC deputy director of operations in the East of England, said: ‘In urgent and emergency care services, although we found leadership had improved, people were waiting too long to be seen, more than 12 hours in some cases, and quite often due to staff shortages.'

The CQC found only 54% of people arriving in the department underwent safety screening to receive proper monitoring while awaiting treatment and only 73% of eligible people were screened for sepsis.

Dunn said staff shortages and capacity issues were also behind someone absconding from the urgent and emergency department during the inspection without being seen by the psychiatric liaison team.

The CQC found over 250 people were moved to other wards in the middle of the night in just one month with some people moved at least four times during their stay and some moved as frequently as 11 to 15 times.

Jo Bennis, chief nurse at North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust, said: ‘I would like to thank our teams in our urgent and emergency care services and medicine division for their dedication to providing good quality care for our patients in what can often be challenging circumstances. Their dedication to care and their desire to improve clearly shone through in their discussions with the inspection team.

‘Since the inspection took place last summer, we have continued to implement a programme to improve the experience of patients. We have been able to reduce the number of instances where we needed to provide corridor care and have a dedicated improvement workstream in place to address patient moves, discharge processes and delivering the fundamentals of care.

‘I am pleased to see a number of key domains inspected by the CQC have either held their good rating or been elevated to good – which is a testament to the hard work of all colleagues and our journey of improvement.

‘We know there is more transformation and improvement work to do and it is encouraging to see how our staff are leading these workstreams. We are committed to making the changes that will give our patients a better experience.'