Ealing Hospital

Updated 26 November 2025

Ealing Hospital urgent and emergency care (UEC) services consist of an adult care emergency department (ED) and an urgent treatment centre (UTC). The UTC treated patients of all ages who had minor injuries or illnesses. The ED did not treat acutely unwell paediatric patients. Any patients under the age of 16 years were stabilised and transferred to neighbouring emergency departments who were able to provide care to this group of patients. Between July 2024 and June 2025 Ealing’s hospital ED saw 43431 patients and its UTC saw 55955 patients.

We carried out an unannounced assessment of Ealing Hospital on 15 and 16 July 2025 in line with our assessment priorities. We assessed the following assessment service group.

• Urgent and emergency care

Overall, the service was rated as requires improvement with breaches of regulation 10, dignity and respect and regulation 12 safe care and treatment.

The emergency department (ED) had previously been inspected in November 2019. At this inspection the urgent treatment centre (UTC) was operated by a different provider. This was the first inspection of the service that included both the emergency department and UTC as a service provided by this trust. At our last inspection the emergency department was rated as requires improvement.

The service did not always work with people and healthcare partners to establish and maintain safe systems of care, in which safety was managed or monitored.

They did not always work together well to provide safe care that met people’s individual needs.

The service did not always detect and control potential risks in the care environment. They did not always make sure equipment, facilities and technology supported the delivery of safe care.

The service did not always assess or manage the risk of infection. They did not always detect and control the risk of it spreading or share concerns with appropriate agencies promptly.

The service did not always supply appropriate, accurate and up-to-date information in formats that were tailored to individual needs.

The service did not always make sure that people could access the care, support and treatment they needed when they needed it.

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

The service made sure that medicines and treatments were safe and met people’s needs, capacities and preferences. They involved people in planning, including when changes happen.

The service always treated patients with kindness, empathy and compassion and respected their privacy and dignity. Staff treated colleagues from other organisations with kindness and respect.

The service cared about and promoted the wellbeing of their staff and supported and enabled staff to always deliver person-centred care.

The service made it easy for people to share feedback and ideas, or raise complaints about their care, treatment and support. Staff involved people in decisions about their care and told them what had changed as a result.

During our assessment we identified areas for improvements and some breaches of regulation. We have requested an action from the trust.

Updated 3 April 2025

We carried out an unannounced assessment of Ealing Hospital on 15 and 16 July 2025 in line with our assessment priorities. We assessed the following assessment service group.

• Urgent and emergency care

Overall, the service was rated as requires improvement with breaches of regulation 10, dignity and respect and regulation12 safe care.

The emergency department (ED) had previously been inspected in November 2019. At this inspection the urgent treatment centre (UTC) was operated by a different provider. This was the first inspection of the service that included both the emergency department and UTC as a service provided by this trust. At our last inspection the emergency department was rated as requires improvement.

The service did not always work with people and healthcare partners to establish and maintain safe systems of care, in which safety was managed or monitored.

They did not always work together well to provide safe care that met people’s individual needs.

The service did not always detect and control potential risks in the care environment. They did not always make sure equipment, facilities and technology supported the delivery of safe care.

The service did not always assess or manage the risk of infection. They did not always detect and control the risk of it spreading or share concerns with appropriate agencies promptly.

The service did not always supply appropriate, accurate and up-to-date information in formats that were tailored to individual needs.

The service did not always make sure that people could access the care, support and treatment they needed when they needed it.

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

The service made sure that medicines and treatments were safe and met people’s needs, capacities and preferences. They involved people in planning, including when changes happen.

The service always treated patients with kindness, empathy and compassion and respected their privacy and dignity. Staff treated colleagues from other organisations with kindness and respect.

The service cared about and promoted the wellbeing of their staff and supported and enabled staff to always deliver person-centred care.

The service made it easy for people to share feedback and ideas, or raise complaints about their care, treatment and support. Staff involved people in decisions about their care and told them what had changed as a result.

During our assessment we identified areas for improvements and some breaches of regulation. We have requested an action from the trust.

Updated 20 May 2022

Updated 31 August 2018

Our rating of this service stayed the same. We rated it it as requires improvement because:

• Mandatory training rates for medical staff were low including for safeguarding level 3 training.
• Staffing remained a challenge for the service. There were significant vacancies in the community children’s nursing team and the staffing establishment was not sufficient for the level of staffing required on the children’s outpatients and day care unit.
• There was no protocol or standard operating procedure available for staff to follow if a child or young person became unwell on the outpatients and day care unit.
• The Women and Children’s division still did not have oversight of young people admitted to adult wards at Ealing Hospital. There was still no flagging system to identify young people who had been admitted to adult wards.
• Staff we spoke with felt learning was not shared effectively however the trust told us there were cross site governance meetings where staff could attend where learning was shared.
• Not all of the risks we identified at the Ealing Hospital site were on the risk register.
• Staff on the children’s outpatients and day care unit did not receive clinical or safeguarding supervision.
• Nursing staff had not received training in the recognition and management of children with sepsis.
• The service provided care and treatment based on national guidance and evidence of its effectiveness. However, some clinical guidelines had not been reviewed in line with trust timescales.
• There was no longer a play specialist team at the hospital. A play specialist was being recruited but the post was to be shared with the other hospital site.
• The amount of time managers dedicated to the children’s services at Ealing Hospital remained very limited.
• Staff still felt unsettled and uncertain about the future provision of children’s services at Ealing hospital.

However:

• The trust planned and provided services in a way that met the needs of local people.
• There had been significant improvements in referral to treatment times since our last inspection, with consistently good overall compliance of over 95%.
• The service took account of the individual needs of children and young people including those with learning disabilities. The unit had a learning disability champion and encouraged the use of learning disability passports to help inform decision making.
• The community children’s nursing team and continuing care team supported transitional care needs and children with long term conditions. The team promoted bringing care closer to home and worked with children and young people to prevent and reduce hospital admissions.
• Staff were passionate about their work toward children and their families and focused on delivering patient centred care.

Updated 21 June 2016

Overall the critical care at Ealing was good. Patients were cared for by a safe number of competent staff who used evidence-based practice to achieve good outcomes. Staff had good access to patient information and current best practice guidelines as well as up to date research articles. Patient safety thermometer results were good and there was a proactive incident reporting culture.

We saw evidence that incidents were investigated appropriately, with learning points disseminated to unit staff, . h However, there was limited shared learning relating to incidents. The vision for the service focused on an improvement in quality and safety through investment in staff training and development.

We saw some evidence of innovation such as the development of the high flow oxygen service.

The critical care service was caring and patient privacy and dignity was maintained at all times. Staff knowledge and implementation of safeguarding was good and we saw evidence that regular patient risk assessments took place. Patients’ pain was frequently assessed and well managed by staff who ensured patient comfort at all times.

Multidisciplinary working was embedded on the unit, particularly during the weekly meeting.

Updated 21 June 2016

We found the specialist palliative care team (SPCT) to be passionate about ensuring patients and people close to them received safe, effective and good quality care in a timely manner. However there were some concerns raised by specialist staff and from our observations about whether all generalist nurses, doctors and consultants had the expertise to recognise patients who were dying.

The knowledge base was described as “patchy” especially since the withdrawal of EOL and specialist palliative care induction training which had given all staff a base knowledge and understanding.

We were given examples of patients’ treatment and observations continuing when EOL had been identified. This could cause the patient unnecessary pain and discomfort at a time when these actions would make no difference to the patient’s health and wellbeing.

The Last Days of Life Care Agreement which replaced the Liverpool Care Pathway was not being used for any of the patients we reviewed, although ‘do not attempt cardio pulmonary resuscitation’ orders were in place. The completion of DNACPRs was variable. Some were not fully completed or discussed or signed off by a senior clinician.

The SPCT leads were focussed on raising staff awareness around EOLC. However they felt this should be more widely embraced in the trust.

Staff were aware of their responsibility in raising concerns and reporting incidents. However, we found there was apathy in reporting everything including near misses due to a lack of feedback and learning outcomes.

The SPCT at Ealing hospital did not feel engaged with the trust strategy and were unsure how it would affect services at Ealing Hospital.Although the lead for palliative and cancer services visited Ealing Hospital twice a week there was little local leadership on a day-to-day basis.

Updated 21 June 2016

Overall outpatient and diagnostic services at Ealing Hospital were good because there were systems in place to identify record and review incidents and staff were aware of how incidents should be escalated and recorded.

Outpatient and diagnostic services were visibly clean and there were processes to ensure cleaning was maintained.

We saw good evidence of how the diagnostic services benchmark their services through national and local audit activity and national guidelines including NICE and Royal College of Radiologists.

We found staff were compassionate, caring and proud to work at Ealing Hospital.

Mandatory training was provided however staff told us face to face training was often difficult to access or attend due to clinical commitments.

Hard copy records were not always available in time for clinics; the trust was aware of this and had started phased plans to integrate hard copy records in preparation for a move to an electronic record management system across all sites.

The service had a backlog of patients waiting more than 18 weeks for an appointment and had attempted to reduce waiting times for patients. There was a good system in place which highlighted the patients who had waited longest and should be clinically prioritised for the first available appointments.

Updated 20 May 2022