Latest hospital inspections find mixed picture of care

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has found a "mixed picture of care" among the first hospital trusts that is has investigated as part of its acute hospital inspection programme.

Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Professor Sir Mike Richards, said that he was encouraged by the investigation to date as good examples of care had been found even in hospitals where the overall findings had not been positive.

Of the most recent four the the CQC has looked at, two had been seen to be delivering good examples of care (Salford Royal and Royal Surrey County Hospitals NHS Foundation Trusts ) and the other two – Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch NHS Foundation Trust and Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust – were judged to have a number of areas of concern.

"We have now published reports on eight trusts following our new-style inspections," said Professor Richards.

"The larger teams and the involvement of more clinical specialists and members of the public is giving us a good picture of what care looks like across these large and complex organisations.

"Our reports show a mixed picture of care, but I want hospitals to learn from each other to help them improve their services and we will continue to highlight good practice where we find it."


All of the inspection teams include doctors, nurses, hospital managers, trained members of the public, CQC inspectors and analysts. They carry out a mixture of announced and unannounced inspections, held focus groups with staff, and held a public listening event. The reports are based on a combination of inspection findings, information from CQC’s Intelligent Monitoring system, and information provided by patients, the public and other organisations.


For more information and to view the reports, visit www.cqc.org.uk.  

Mark Dugdale