HEALTH chiefs have drawn up an action plan to improve the county's health service following the critical report by the Commission for Health Improvement (CHI).

The independent assessors highlighted a number of weaknesses within Worcestershire Acute Hospital NHS Trust in its report published in February this year.

It urged the trust to tackle problems in the following areas:

- Operation cancellations, which were too frequent

- Poor availability of patient records

- Blame culture within the trust

- Informing of non-executive directors

- Over-reliance on agency nurses

- Too many patients accommodated in inappropriate wards

The trust's managers have made a series of proposals to address the problems.

They are looking to establish a short stay surgical assessment unit at Worcestershire Royal Hospital to reduce the number of cancelled operations, as well as using Kidderminster Hospital more often.

The serious problem of patient record availability will be tackled by targeting persistent problem areas and monitoring note availability daily.

The trust intends to review, re-launch and publicise its policy to promote a fair blame culture.

The roles of non-executive directors will be reviewed, and they will be given more opportunities to attend clinical governance training programmes.

Agency nurses have already been removed from most areas within the trust, being replaced by foreign and newly graduated recruits.

The trust's escalation policy will be reviewed to reduce the number of patients accommodated in inappropriate wards.

"A lot of the areas that were flagged up by CHI was work that was already being done," said Richard Haynes, spokesman for the Worcestershire Acute Hospital NHS Trust.

"The action plan will be discussed by the Trust board later this week."