Nuffield Health York Hospital

Updated 3 December 2025

Date of assessment 3-4 July 2024. Nuffield Health York Hospital provides a range of independent health hospital services. This assessment looked at services for children and young people, which we rated as good. The rating from services for children and young people has been combined with ratings of the other services from the last inspections. See our previous reports to get a full picture of all other services at Nuffield Health York Hospital. The overall location rating of Nuffield Health York Hospital remains good.

Updated 5 November 2025

CQC carried out this assessment on 3 and 4 July 2024. The assessment service group (ASG) had never been inspected or rated before. In CQC’s last report for the hospital location, children’s care and treatment merged as part of outpatients and diagnostics. CQC inspected all the quality statements across the safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led key questions. CQC’s team comprised two secondary care inspectors, a children’s services inspector and specialist advisor with a background in paediatric nursing. The provider was assessing all children and young people (CYP) presenting to the service for treatment appropriately. The hospital cared for and treated CYP often as outpatients, but occasionally as inpatients for certain surgical specialities, mostly orthopaedics and ear, nose and throat (ENT). Assessment was done by paediatric nurses based at another provider hospital location. If a young person was not assessed as appropriate for the adult pathway at York hospital, they were offered a different location more suitable to meet their needs. Before admission CYP had their care needs assessed using the provider’s standardised assessment criteria. This process helped staff identify individual health care needs and safely offer a choice of hospital locations for surgery. The provider had appropriate policies to safely stream children and young people onto the correct pathways to meet their needs.

Updated 14 June 2017

We rated this service as good because it was safe, caring, responsive and well-led. We did not rate effective as we are currently not confident that we are collecting sufficient evidence to rate effectiveness for Outpatients & Diagnostic Imaging.

The service had reported no never events or serious incidents and no incidents had been reported to the CQC in accordance with the Ionising Radiation (Medical Exposure) Regulations 2000 (IR(ME)R). Staff were encouraged to raise concerns and report incidents. We saw evidence of lessons learnt from safety incidents and changes to clinical practice.

Medications including contrast media used in radiology were stored securely in appropriately locked rooms and fridges. There was an effective process in place for monitoring the use of prescription charts.

Policies and procedures were accessible to staff and had been developed and referenced to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and national guidance.

All staff had completed an appraisal and they described being supported in undertaking further learning to develop their skills and knowledge.

All patients spoke positively about the care and treatment they had received and we observed staff acting in a compassionate manner. Patients were treated with dignity and respect. Patients were given appropriate information and support about their care or treatment.

The service was responsive to patients’ needs. Access and flow in the Outpatient department (OPD) and radiology departments was well managed. Patients could be seen quickly for urgent appointments if required and patients told us their appointments were on time. Patient records were available for appointments and the department had timely access to test results.

People using the service could raise concerns and complaints were investigated and responded to in a timely manner.

Updated 14 June 2017

Surgery was the main activity of the hospital.

Where our findings on surgery also apply to other services, we do not repeat the information but cross-refer to the surgery section.

We rated this service as good overall because it was safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led.

The service had reported no never events or serious injuries. Learning was cascaded via the governance committees and received at staff team meetings.

Internal patient satisfaction surveys indicated 96% satisfaction for cleanliness and the service had a low rate of hospital acquired infection.

The hospital target for mandatory training completion was 100% compliance; training data we reviewed showed a compliance rate of 95% at the beginning of September 2016.

Integrated care records covered the entire patient pathway from pre-operative assessment to discharge and included comprehensive care plans for identified care needs.

We reviewed 25 sets of medical and nursing care records whilst on site and records were legible, complete and contemporaneous.

Staffing was reviewed on a daily basis for the forthcoming shifts and adjusted according to clinical need and theatre activity. A weekly capacity meeting was held each Thursday morning to review the following week’s activity and staffing levels.

The hospital had an out-of-hours rota for anaesthetists to provide 24-hour cover for patients post-operatively and there was a service level agreement (SLA) for emergency transfer arrangements with the local NHS trust.

The rate of unplanned transfers of care from this hospital to a nearby NHS trust, unplanned readmissions and unplanned returns to theatre was similar to or better when compared to independent hospital performance data held by CQC.

Staff told us they had been supported with personal development through attending degree-based training programmes, national vocational qualifications and care certificate programmes.

During the inspection, we observed warm, open and positive interactions between staff and patients. All patients we spoke with were happy with the care they received and we received universally positive written feedback from patients during the inspection.

The hospital achieved the overall referral to treatment indicators of 90% of NHS patients admitted for treatment from a waiting list within 18 weeks for the reporting period. It also achieved better than the indicator of 92% of incomplete admitted patients beginning treatment within 18 weeks of referral in the reporting period.

A dementia “champion” provided additional support and training for staff on the inpatient ward. Patient- led assessments of the care environment (PLACE) scoring for the hospital showed dementia assessment as scoring 85%, which was better than the England average of 81%.

Inpatients had access to physiotherapy sessions several times a day, which allowed for quicker mobility and shorter stays in hospital.

In the last 12 months, the hospital cancelled 28 procedures. All patients received another appointment within the next 28 days.

The inpatient ward and theatres had regular staff meetings. We noted good attendance and discussion of key items such as the risk register, audit outcomes, complaints, incidents and infection control.

However:

We did not identify a clear mechanism to share learning from unplanned transfers and patient safety incidents with the RMO. This was acted upon at the time of inspection and at the unannounced inspection, communication systems had been improved.

None of the ten surgical case notes reviewed for consultant entries recorded daily consultant visits as per the requirements of practising privileges. Two sets of notes had documentation about the consultant’s visit from the nurse in charge of the patient’s care.

We saw that checks were made to ensure patients had adhered to fasting times before surgery went ahead; however, at the time of the inspection, the hospital did not undertake audits of actual fasting times and whether these met the expected standard.

Two patients receiving oxygen did not have oxygen prescribed on the medication record.

We noted that patient specific directives (PSD) for bowel preparation did not always evidence that the patient had been assessed by the prescriber before it was supplied.