Northwick Park Hospital

Updated 21 October 2026

We carried out a comprehensive assessment of End of life care and Services for children and young people, and a focused follow up of Urgent and emergency care at Northwick Park Hospital. This was an unannounced assessment on 21 and 22 July 2026 for Services for children and young people and Urgent and emergency care, and announced assessment on 28 and 29 July 2026 for End of life care.

The purpose of this assessment was to re-rate End of life care and Services for children and young people at the location due to the age of the rating and follow up on concerns raised at our previous assessment of Urgent and emergency care following an inspection of the service in July 2025. The new ratings have been combined with the existing ratings of the other services delivered at this location . As a result of our assessment, the overall rating for Northwick Park Hospital has remained the same and is rated Requires Improvement.

At this assessment we did not identify any breaches of regulations.

Updated 8 April 2026

Northwick Park Hospital is a 750-bed hospital and part of London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust. It provides end of life care to patients on the hospital wards.

This comprehensive assessment took place on 28 and 29 July 2026. It was a routine announced inspection that assessed all of the key questions within the quality statements of safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led. At our last inspection, we rated this service as good overall. At this inspection, the rating has remained the same.

We spoke with and spent time with 29 members of staff, including the palliative care team, mortuary staff, the spiritual care team and clinical staff involved in palliative and end of life care. We attended ward rounds, handovers and multidisciplinary team meetings. We spoke with managers, team leaders and senior managers. We interviewed key people involved in providing end of life care, reviewed clinical records while we were on site and requested documents following our visit.

Updated 8 April 2026

Northwick Park Hospital provided a children and young person’s service across the London borough of Brent, Ealing and Harrow. The hospital was part of London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust. We carried out an unannounced assessment of children and young person’s (CYP) services on the 21 – 22 July 2026 due to the age of the previous rating carried out June 2018, which we rated as requires improvement. Our rating of CYP has improved, and we rated it as good during this assessment. We assessed all quality statements across the safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led key questions. We did not identify any breaches of regulations during this assessment.

The service had a proactive and positive culture of safety, based on openness and honesty. Staff listened to concerns about safety and investigated and reported safety events. Lessons were learnt to continually identify and embed good practice.

Staff had a good understanding of how to report incidents. They said they received feedback from managers, and of any outcomes or learning that was identified.

The service had enough nursing, medical and support staff with the right qualifications, skills, training, and experience to keep children and young people safe from avoidable harm and to provide the right care and treatment.

Updated 24 April 2026

We carried out an announced focused assessment of the urgent and emergency care (UEC) department at Northwick Park Hospital on 21 July 2026 to assess improvements the trust had made following the last assessment in July 2025.

The service was previously rated as requires improvement and in breach of regulations 10, dignity and respect and 12, safe care and treatment. This assessment focused on quality statements under the Safe and Responsive key questions. We rated the service as good. The service had made improvements and is no longer in breach of regulations.

We found that the action plan implemented following our previous assessment had addressed many of the issues raised. These included adapting temporary escalation spaces to ensure privacy and dignity and increasing resources to ensure safe staffing.

The trust had improved how it managed patients arriving to the emergency department (ED) following a redesign of the department completed in September 2025. Check in options allowed adult patients to register digitally. The Hello Nurse and Enhanced Nurse Practitioner (ENP) assessed patients on arrival in a timely manner and directed them to the most appropriate area.

Paediatric patients entered paediatric ED immediately on arrival where they were streamed appropriately by specialist paediatric nurses, ensuring safe care and treatment. Paediatric facilities were age appropriate, meeting the needs of younger and older children alike.

The service provided patients with information in multiple languages that represented the local population. We saw there was improved access to real time translation services ensuring that services met individual patient needs.

The service used nationally recognised tools to assess deteriorating patients, sepsis and skin integrity. However, not all documentation was completed in a timely manner which could potentially lead to delayed treatment.

Updated 20 May 2022

Updated 25 March 2019

• We have not reviewed the rating for this service because of the limited focus of this inspection. The rating therefore remains good overall.

Updated 24 December 2021

Updated 21 June 2016

Outpatients and diagnostic imagingservices at Northwick Park Hospital did not consistently offer appointments within defined target times.

There was a system in place to highlight which patients had waited longest and should be prioritised for the first available appointments. The trust had attempted to reduce the backlog of patients waiting for appointments, but financial constraints meant that additional clinics had been stopped.

We found that management of risks associated with emergency situations in some areas within the outpatient services including haematology had not been appropriately recognised, assessed or managed.

We found that there were regular shortages of nursing staff of up to 20% in the outpatients departments.

We found the method for tracking medical records was not reliable. Notes were stored in the medical records department and were collected by medical records staff in preparation for outpatient clinics. Staff were not always aware of or have access to the incident reporting system through Datix.

We found limited evidence of the effectiveness of outpatient services and at times staff were not always caring or respectful of patients.

The services had begun to integrate across the three hospital sites following the merger in 2014, but there was more work needed.

We saw good evidence of how diagnostic services respond to patients’ needs and how outpatients track the progress of patients on the waiting lists for appointments.

Updated 20 May 2022