Nuffield Health Leicester Hospital

Nuffield Health Leicester Hospital is an independent hospital based in Leicester and part of the Nuffield Health corporate group. The hospital has 38 beds all single rooms with en-suite facilities. Facilities include two operating theatres, X-ray, outpatient and diagnostic facilities.

The Nuffield Health Leicester provides surgery, services for children and young people, and outpatients and diagnostic imaging. This service is for NHS, self- funded and insured patients. We inspected surgery, outpatients and diagnostic facilities and services for children and young people.

Children’s facilities at the hospital include dedicated ward and play areas, pram park facilities and designated parent and child car parking. A consultant paediatrician and lead paediatric nurse lead the children’s service. A nurse adviser for children also supports the children’s service whose remit covers children’s services within the Nuffield group of hospitals.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out the announced part of the inspection on 20th and 21st September 2016, along with an unannounced visit to the hospital on 29th September 2016 and 20th January 2017.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we ask the same five questions of all services: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs, and well-led? Where we have a legal duty to do so we rate services’ performance against each key question as outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate.

Throughout the inspection, we took account of what people told us and how the provider understood and complied with the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

Services we rate

We rated this hospital/service as good overall.

We saw some areas of good practice including:

• Patients were protected from avoidable harm and abuse.

• There was a good incident reporting culture throughout the hospital.

• Staff were supported to be open and transparent and they understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns and report incidents and near misses.

• The service was responsive to inspection findings and provided ‘This is me’ and ‘hospital passports’ to support people living with dementia and learning disabilities.

• Emergency equipment checking was up to date in all areas.

• Staff had good access to online and extended training.

• Managers were supportive and visible.

• A family atmosphere was apparent throughout the service.

We found good practice in relation to outpatient care:

• The staff treated patients with dignity and respect and maintained confidentiality.

• Attempts were made to tailor appointment times to suit patient needs.

• Notes were stored confidentially throughout appointments.

We found areas of good practice in surgery:

• Staff addressed concerns over fasting times by developing an aide memoir system for patients.

• Equipment was checked and ready for use at all times.

• Evidence based risk assessments were performed throughout surgery.

• Staff were flexible and where possible adapted care to the individual’s needs.

We found areas of good practice in children’s and young person’s services:

• Efforts were made to tailor care to the individual child’s needs.

• The needs of children, young people and families were considered throughout their care.

• Staff were suitably trained to care for the needs of the children.

• Auditing was used to inform practice.

• Practice emergency training was performed to simulate potential emergency situations.

• Children and young people received kind compassionate care.

However, we also found the following issues that the service provider needs to improve:

• The sepsis policy was not up to date and iLeaflets were not routinely available in languages other than English.

• There were gaps in mandatory training due to sickness.

• Following this inspection, we told the provider that it should make other improvements, even though a regulation had not been breached, to help the service improve.

Ellen Armistead.

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals