Claremont Hospital

On this page

• Overview
• Assessing needs
• Delivering evidence-based care and treatment
• How staff, teams and services work together
• Supporting people to live healthier lives
• Monitoring and improving outcomes
• Consent to care and treatment

People who used the service were involved in assessments of their needs. Staff reviewed assessments taking account of people's communication, personal and health needs. Care was based on latest evidence and good practice, policies were updated and referenced to national guidance. Patient reviews took place with other healthcare professionals to ensure patients were able to receive their treatment. Staff made sure people understood their care and treatment to enable them to give informed consent.

This service scored 75 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

The service had a comprehensive pre-operative assessment policy for staff to follow. It clearly outlined the roles and responsibilities of staff and that all pre-operative assessments must be undertaken by registered staff who have successfully completed relevant supervised practice.

The service had a clear pathway that assessed whether people who accessed the service met the clinical risk criteria to be treated at the hospital, those deemed too high risk would be referred to the NHS.

The service ensured that patients’ needs were met, there was an interpreting service available, and this was well publicised through the staff notice boards. Booking staff told us that they highlighted to the ward staff where additional support was required.

Staff used hospital passports to help them make reasonable adjustments for people with communication needs, autism and/or learning disabilities.

Preoperative staff completed care pathways and risk assessments with patients. Our review of records showed these were complete.

Staff followed up to date policies to plan and deliver high quality care according to best practice and national guidance.

The hospital’s overarching policies were produced and reviewed centrally by the hospital group. Staff were able to access all policies on the hospital’s computer system. We sampled the policies and found them in date and evidenced based with references to key national documents.

The service worked collaboratively as a multidisciplinary team, the clinical service managers had regular heads of department meetings to share information. This was cascaded to teams which we observed whilst on site. Staff had monthly team meetings where information was shared. There was also sharing at corporate level with staff having the ability join national conferences with the wider Spire group.

Staff told us how well the team worked together to manage patient risk, the wider hospital clinical team met to discuss higher risk patients to decide whether they could safely be treated at the hospital.

We heard at the morning huddle staff being praised within the teams when they had provided extra support to both staff and patients.

The service supported patients to manage their health and wellbeing, the pre-operative team assessed people’s fitness for surgery and would refer any health concerns to the GP.

The department had a health and well-being noticeboard which included health education promotion including smoking cessation, mental health, preventing a thrombosis. Staff promoted health and well-being through the preoperative check and the patient information booklet.

Physiotherapy staff supported people through various interventions such as acupuncture, and joint classes to manage pain and mobility to enable them to regain mobility.

Patients who had surgery were able to contact the outpatient’s departments for advice post operatively.

The service monitored any adverse outcomes through their incident reporting system and had implemented actions where required. Staff had received wound management training and patients were invited to return to a postoperative clinic for wound care, they could access their GP but most preferred to come back to the hospital.

The physiotherapy team had reduced the length of stay for patients through enabling early mobilisation following joint replacement surgery. They also had a joint school where patients came after their surgery for exercise groups. This also provided ongoing support and advice from the physiotherapy department.

For our detailed findings on how the service monitored and improved outcomes for patients through local partnerships see the monitoring and improving outcomes section in the surgery report.

The organisation had a consent policy, this was also displayed on information boards and was audited. The service currently has paper records, during this assessment we reviewed patient records and saw consent clearly documented. We observed patients being given informed consent in clinic giving the risks and benefits to the procedure. Patients told us they understood their care treatment, however staff knew what to do if they were concerned about a patient’s capacity to consent.