Southern Hill Hospital

Updated 31 May 2022

Southern Hill Hospital is an independent mental health care facility located close to the North Norfolk coast. The hospital is for adults who require assessment and treatment in a mental health inpatient setting. The provider is Southern Hill Limited.

The hospital has five acute wards – Cavell a 15 bedded ward (male), Lincoln a 13 bedded ward (female), Burton an 8 bedded ward (male), Pearson an 8 bedded ward (male) and Adler a 9 bedded ward (male), totalling 53 bedrooms. No wards provided mixed sex accommodation.

Southern Hill Hospital was registered by the Care Quality Commission in May 2018. The hospital is registered to carry out the following regulated activities:

• Assessment and treatment for persons detained under the Mental Health Act 1993
• Treatment of disease, disorder or injury
• Transport services, triage and medical advice provided remotely.

The hospital has a registered manager. The registered manager, along with the provider, are legally responsible and accountable for compliance of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated regulations, including the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) 2014 and the Care Quality Commission (Registration) Regulations 2010.

On the day of inspection there were 35 male patients, of which 25 were detained and 10 were informal and 13 females of which nine were detained and four were informal.

Updated 31 May 2022

We carried out this unannounced focused inspection because we received information giving us concerns about the safety and quality of the service.

We inspected specific safe, effective and well-led selected key lines of enquiry for the service.

We rated safe and well-led domains as requiring improvement as breaches of regulation were found. The effective domain was rated as good. We did not inspect the caring and responsive domains. The overall rating for this service is requires improvement. The previous rating of good for the domains caring and responsive remain. The report for the previous inspection can be found here:

Southern Hill Hospital (cqc.org.uk)

We found the following areas the provider needs to improve:

• Staff did not always follow the provider’s use of rapid tranquilisation policy.
• Incidents were recorded and actions documented, however it was not clear from the documentation and staff meeting records if lessons learnt from incidents had been considered or shared with the staff team as this had not been recorded.
• There was a lack of information for patients informing them of their rights displayed within the wards, however managers advised that patients are given a booklet on admission telling them about their rights.
• Some areas of the wards needed redecoration.

However:

• At the time of inspection, we did not find that all records had been completed. However, following inspection the service provided evidence of a physical health check audit for 175 patients demonstrating the provider had followed its’ own policy and National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance.
• Physical interventions were used as a last resort and the patient safety officer team provided regular and consistent support to staff on each ward. The service was also part of the restraint reduction network.
• Staff had completed and were kept up-to-date with their mandatory training. All compliance rates for mandatory training courses were above the hospital target of 85%.

Updated 31 May 2022