A stretched hospital's medical care has been rated "inadequate" by the healthcare watchdog.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) published its latest report following an inspection of Broomfield Hospital and the Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust, which overall said improvement was needed.

Trust board chief executive Clare Panniker said: “This was the rating we were expecting.

“We have faced a number of challenges in recent years and I’m reassured that most of the issues raised by the CQC are ones we had already identified ourselves and have started to address.

“We are determined to provide the very best standards of care for our patients, and I am confident that, with a new and committed leadership team supporting a truly caring workforce, we will deliver significant improvements to regain a Good and then Outstanding rating.

“We know that having teams of permanent staff leads to improved care and a better working environment.

“That is what we want for our staff and patients.

“Having to rely on agency nurses not only impacts on care, but also costs us millions of pounds a year.

“We have introduced a host of initiatives to tackle the problem, including an overseas recruitment campaign, offering our student nurses permanent roles with us, and supporting apprenticeships which develop healthcare assistants to become registered nurses.

“We are also working with national colleagues and local universities to see what more we can do.

“We are well-sighted on the issues we are facing here at Mid Essex, and understand the scale of the improvements needed.

“We are determined to rise to the challenge, and have already started to see real change.

“I would like to thank our staff who work tirelessly to provide the very best care to our patients.”

Fiona Allinson, CQC's head of hospital inspections said since its last inspection in April 2017, "staffing remained a challenge".

She said: "There was a significant decline in safety practices since our last inspection.

"Staffing remained a challenge and the processes to ensure that temporary staff were competent in roles was not consistently followed.

"Access and flow was a significant concern and staff vacancies were high.

"The processes for ensuring that temporary staff were competent to carry out roles was not consistently applied."

Mrs Allinson's report demonstrated that staff are currently working as hard as they can to look after their patients.

However, despite every effort from the staff inside the hospital, there are not enough of them to make the service safe for both physical and mental health care.

Mrs Allinson said: "Staff felt patients at risk of mental health crises were not always assessed promptly, sometimes waiting up to a week for assessment this, which increased the risk to patients experiencing mental health difficulties.

"Nurse staffing levels were not always safe to ensure patient needs were met, with vacancies of up to 60 per cent.

"Staff across wards including service leads confirmed this was their main risk.

"The service covered gaps as far as possible by transferring staff from other wards and using agency staff, but this meant staff were often not familiar with the ward.

"On all wards, staff felt pressured due to the acuity of the patients and staffing levels."

Following the damning report, Rachel Hearn, director of nursing and quality at NHS Mid Essex Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) was 'disappointed', saying she recognised that staff are doing everything in their power to give patients the best care their numbers can offer.

She said: “Despite considerable pressure on services that's affecting overall performance, we know colleagues at Mid Essex Hospital Trust are working hard to maintain and improve patient care.

"Like us, the trust want people in mid Essex to live well.

"Having high quality hospital and outpatient services is an important part of that and we are working together to identify and progress actions that address issues raised in the trust's recent CQC report.

“It was naturally disappointing to learn of the change in overall rating but we are confident that with continuing cooperation these issues can be resolved.”