Clifton Park Hospital Limited

Ratings - Outpatients

• Overall

  Good

• Safe

  Good

• Effective

  Good

• Caring

  Good

• Responsive

  Good

• Well-led

  Good

Our view of the service

We assessed the outpatients service as part of a comprehensive hospital location assessment on 30 September and 1 October 2025. This was in response to concerns around learning culture arising from never events in surgery.

We spoke to 21 clinical and non-clinical staff of various grades.

There were no previous breaches. The service had addressed and improved the two requirement notices from our last inspection in February 2022;

• Signage and directions to the outpatient’s department was now clear.
• The provider ensured outpatients department (OPD) staff monitored and documented their use of spill kits.

Outpatients was a small proportion of hospital activity. The main service was surgery. Where arrangements are the same, we have reported findings in the surgery section.

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

On this assessment we found the following examples of good practice;

• All OPD staff we spoke to enjoyed working for the hospital and felt respected, appreciated and well supported by managers and teams to raise any suggestions or concerns.
• The OPD manager demonstrated excellent oversight, dedication and focus of all clinical and non-clinical governance processes, arrangements and issues within their department.
• Leads outlined some encouraging early service development examples. For example, patient participation groups and a private pain service to meet regional demand.
• We heard examples of how OPD staff and consultants met outpatient’s individual needs including tailoring communication needs, offering emotional support and reducing anxiety.

• The service had appointed an OPD clinical fellow. They helped free up consultants to see more newly referred patients. Consultants told us the fellow was a practical extra resource reflective of the NHS joint venture and positive relations.

However, we found areas for improvement;

• Key clinical governance documentation had expired and was overdue for review.
• The OPD did not formally capture reasons for ‘did not attend’ (DNA) missed appointments. The department’s DNA rate had slightly increased.

People's experience of this service

We spoke to eight outpatients and their loved ones. All were very positive and complimentary about the service. They felt nothing could be improved.