St Bartholomew’s Hospital rated Good by CQC

Published: 20 September 2017 Page last updated: 3 November 2022
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St Bartholomew’s Hospital has been rated as Good overall by the Care Quality Commission - with some areas given an Outstanding rating.

St Bartholomew’s is a teaching hospital in the City of London and part of Barts Health NHS Trust. It was rated Good in all areas inspected by CQC: medical care; surgery; critical care and outpatients and diagnostic imaging.

In CQC’s well-led category, St Bartholomew’s was rated Outstanding for surgery and critical care. The areas of Outstanding practice - in medical care included:

Senior teams encouraged staff to participate in research and develop innovative projects to improve care in their clinical area. Staff teams from three wards had conducted falls prevention research that led to the introduction of falls champion badges for staff who had demonstrated new skills in falls prevention and who could train or coach colleagues.

Staff in the sexual health clinic were encouraged to present their work at the annual British Association of Sexual Health and HIV conference - to share best practice and new learning.

The trust was participating in the East London Cancer Board initiative. This is a collaboration between 20 organisations and 50 professionals who seek to agree priorities for improvements and drive positive change in local cancer services. An experimental medicine cancer centre had recruited 934 patients to trials developing practice-changing medicine for four cancer types.

An international cancer specialist organisation had selected the hospital as one of 20 global sites of excellence in immune-oncology to advance the development of cancer immune therapy.

Staff in the chemotherapy assessment unit provided a 24-hour telephone triage and advice service for patients feeling unwell during their treatment and patients who had completed a course of treatment within the previous six months.

In surgery:

Surgery services at St Bart’s Hospital were well managed. They were in the process of introducing a robotic surgical team with a fully adapted robotic surgery theatre. This would allow the surgery services to offer less invasive procedures, leading to faster recovery times, minimised trauma, and reduced pain.

St Bart’s Hospital was the first site in Europe to perform Electromagnetic Navigation Bronchoscopy, and was the only centre offering this in the UK as a routine service. The surgery department is also a European training centre for this procedure.

The hospital’s Grown Up Congenital Heart disease programme recently received national accreditation and is one of the largest in the world. It provides supported transition from childhood to adulthood for those born with heart disease via a well-established programme with a leading London paediatric hospital.

In Critical Care:

The service had set up a well-governed and safe service to provide both cardiac and respiratory support for patients.

However, there are some areas where the trust should make improvements. In critical care these include:

  • Ensuring all teams meet the 90% target for completion of safeguarding training.
  • Ensuring all teams meet the 90% target for completion of mandatory training.
  • Ensuring further emphasis on making sure that all staff accurately and appropriately use the national early warning scores (NEWS) when assessing patients.

In surgery the trust should:

  • Ensure there are processes in place to monitor consistent recording of temperatures for medication refrigerators on surgery wards.
  • Ensure patients who have appointments cancelled are offered an alternative.
  • Ensure there is screening for patients who may have dementia, and that additional support is available for patients with dementia or other complex needs.
  • Improve communication with patients regarding their discharge planning from surgery wards.

In critical care the trust should:

  • Ensure sepsis six pathway is fully integrated into practice and staff are educated appropriately.
  • Consider increasing the number of dieticians to meet national guidelines.

In Outpatients and Diagnostic Imaging the trust should:

  • Ensure clinics running late are reported as incidents in line with trust policy.
  • Improve signage in the X-ray department informing patients of the dangers of radiation.
  • Record ambient room temperatures are recorded in all rooms where medicines are stored.

England’s Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Professor Ted Baker, said:

“I am pleased that St Bartholomew’s Hospital has performed well in this most recent inspection. Its overall rating of Good is a credit to all of the staff at the hospital - especially since we observed some truly outstanding areas of care."

“I hope that in the future St Bartholomew’s Hospital will continue its good work and improve its standard of care even further.”

Ends

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I am pleased that St Bartholomew’s Hospital has performed well in this most recent inspection

England’s Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Professor Ted Baker

About the Care Quality Commission

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and social care in England.

We make sure health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care and we encourage care services to improve.

We monitor, inspect and regulate services to make sure they meet fundamental standards of quality and safety and we publish what we find to help people choose care.