- Independent hospital
Practice Plus Group Hospital - Barlborough
Assessment report published 12 June 2026
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Practice Plus Group – Barlborough was originally known as Barlborough NHS Treatment Centre and was rebranded in October 2020 when it became part of Practice Plus Group.
The location provides surgical, diagnostic imaging and outpatient services. Its main surgical specialties are orthopaedics, spinal surgery, ophthalmology and general surgery. The service has a 36-bed ward and 6 day case beds. It has 4 operating theatres, including 3 laminar flow theatres. A laminar flow theatre is an operating theatre designed to keep the air as clean as possible during surgery.
The outpatient department includes 7 consulting rooms, 1 treatment room and an ophthalmic outpatient suite with 3 additional rooms. The service also delivered nurse-led pre-assessment clinics for patients undergoing surgery, including those who had been seen elsewhere or required updated assessments. In addition, regular dressing clinics were provided on weekdays to support post-operative care, including wound reviews and suture or clip removal.
The service provides care for a mix of NHS funded and privately funded patients. It primarily supports people living in Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, South Yorkshire and North Yorkshire. The service also supports a local NHS trust with waiting list management.
We carried out a comprehensive inspection of surgical and outpatient services at this location, which included an unannounced visit on 16 and 17 February 2026. The purpose of this inspection was to review the quality of care provided due to the length of time since the last inspection which was in 17-19 March 2015.
Our detailed findings for each key question can be found in the relevant sections of this report. Surgical and outpatient services were part of the services provided at this location. At this inspection, the overall rating for both services for the location remained unchanged. We rated the location as good overall, with outstanding for caring. Surgery and outpatient services are closely interlinked at this location. Where the findings and evidence for both services are the same, we have not repeated the detail in outpatient report. In these cases, the outpatient report refers to the surgery report, where the full findings are described.
At the previous inspection, areas for improvement were identified. At this assessment, inspectors found that these had been addressed, with no ongoing regulatory breaches.
The service had strengthened its arrangements for reporting serious incidents. Leaders confirmed that incidents resulting in harm were reported to the Care Quality Commission in line with legislative requirements. Staff demonstrated improved understanding of reporting responsibilities, and learning from incidents was shared through governance processes. The service had also updated its use of the surgical safety checklist, and staff were consistently using the most up‑to‑date version in theatres.
Leaders had taken action to address out‑of‑hours nursing cover for unexpected returns to theatre, and clear arrangements were now in place.
However, we found previously raised concerns about storage space in theatre department were still there. Leaders told us they had developed plans to address the storage limitations; however, these were postponed due to financial constraints. Leaders reported they were currently reviewing options to progress these plans. In the meantime, the risk was recorded on the risk register and managed through interim controls and ongoing oversight.