Hamptons Hospital

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• 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

This means we looked for evidence that people’s care, treatment and support achieved good outcomes and promoted a good quality of life, based on best available evidence.

This is the first assessment for this diagnostic service. This key question has been rated Good.

We have not awarded this service a score for Effective.

Find out about when we will not publish a key question score and what we look at when we assess Effective.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service made sure people’s care and treatment was effective by assessing and reviewing their health, care, wellbeing and communication needs with them.

Staff carried out daily safety huddles each morning to review the patient lists for imaging sessions. Following the huddles, staff shared relevant information with senior staff by email and communicated key points to junior staff. Staff aimed to identify and plan for patients’ individual needs when contacting them prior to their appointments and continued to respond to those needs during their appointment.

Inspectors observed staff providing person‑centred care to a patient undergoing a CT scan who experienced back pain. Staff took appropriate action to promote comfort by positioning support under the patient’s knees and providing a blanket due to low room temperature.

Staff understood how to identify patients with communication or information needs and the service’s responsibilities in meeting the accessible information standard. The service had installed hearing loops throughout the hospital to support people with hearing impairments. Staff described how they used live translation tools to support effective communication with patients who did not speak English.

We scored the service as 2. The evidence showed some shortfalls. The service did not always plan and deliver people’s care and treatment with them, including what was important and mattered to them.

The service had policies and standard operating procedures (SOPs) in place; however, several documents were overdue for review. The policies supported evidence-based practice and national standards. For example, the diagnostic imaging service held detailed documentation such as the Ionising Radiations Protection Policy and Procedures under IR(ME)R 2017 Referral criteria.

The diagnostic imaging department undertook some audit activity. During our inspection, staff told us they completed image quality audits; however, the evidence they provided related only to hand hygiene audits. As a result, inspectors were not assured that the service maintained effective oversight of its clinical audit programme.

The service did not participate in any external benchmarking activities with other comparable diagnostic imaging departments.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service worked well across teams and services to support people. They made sure people only needed to tell their story once by sharing their assessment of needs when people moved between different services.

Staff shared information about wider hospital operations at the daily huddle meetings, and diagnostic staff discussed their own set of patients. We were informed that there was no handover as there was only 2 members of staff but information was communicated verbally and by email when required.

The team also worked effectively with wider hospital staff, and the diagnostic imaging manager met with other heads of departments and leads to exchange information and cascade key messages to team members.

The department had not held a departmental meeting for some time due to low staffing levels. However, staff told us they felt comfortable raising concerns or discussing issues when required. Staff stated that meetings had taken place more frequently when staffing levels were higher.

Staff also described a flexible approach to working arrangements.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service supported people to manage their health and wellbeing to maximise their independence, choice and control. The service supported people to live healthier lives and where possible, reduce their future needs for care and support.

Although there were limited time and opportunity within diagnostic imaging to support people to manage their health and wellbeing or make healthier lifestyle choices, staff encouraged patients to hydrate. We also observed a noticeboard in the shared waiting area that displayed leaflets promoting wellbeing, including information about smoking cessation services.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service routinely monitored people’s care and treatment to continuously improve it. They ensured that outcomes were positive and consistent, and that they met both clinical expectations and the expectations of people themselves.

The service outsourced imaging reporting to radiologists, which resulted in a turnaround time of several days. However, staff followed a process to flag urgent findings to ensure timely action. Evidence showed that the service had a business continuity plan in place to reduce reporting times to 24 hours, which would improve patient outcomes.

Staff demonstrated competence in using the equipment and technology available to support patients and improve their health outcomes.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service told people about their rights around consent and respected these when delivering person-centred care and treatment.We observed radiology staff explain a CT procedure to a patient and obtain consent to proceeding with the examination. Staff also discussed an MRI scan with another patient and obtained appropriate consent. In both instances, staff provided clear explanations about the procedures being undertaken.

Staff demonstrated an understanding of how to obtain informed verbal and written consent from people using the service before commencing scans. Consent was appropriately documented in all 3 patient records we reviewed.