- NHS hospital
Colchester General Hospital
Report from 5 March 2025 assessment
Contents
Ratings - Urgent and emergency services
Our view of the service
East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust was formed 1 July 2018 following the merger of Colchester Hospital University Foundation Trust and Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust. They provide hospital and community health services to almost one million people and are the largest NHS organisation in East Anglia, employing more than 12,000 staff.
Emergency care is delivered at the Colchester and Ipswich sites. The emergency department at Colchester General Hospital consists of an adult emergency department with majors and minors cubicles, a resuscitation room, an ambulatory care unit and paediatric emergency department. The department is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
We previously inspected in 2022 and found 2 breaches of regulations relating to safe care and treatment, staffing and good governance.
We carried out an assessment of the urgent and emergency care on 29 and 30 April 2025. This was a responsive assessment due to safeguarding concerns and emerging safety risk for people receiving care at Colchester General Hospital. We reviewed 19 quality statements across safe, responsive and well-led.
The department still had work to do to meet the requirements of being a safe service at all times. We looked at safe, responsive and well-led, and elements of effective and caring. The ratings for safe, responsive and well-led remained requires improvement. The service overall is therefore rated as requires improvement.
Due to the continued pressure on the department from crowding and demand, which was caused by a lack of available beds from delayed discharges of mostly to social care, patients were waiting far too long in the department. This was of concern also for patients who had mental health needs and their families and having to often wait many days for a specialist bed. Governance and risk management was not yet to a sufficient standard to manage the areas of risk identified specifically in relation to increased staff absence and the risk that patients experienced long waiting times in emergency department due to lack of patient flow .
However, they followed evidence-based care and treatment protocols. Patients were able to give their consent or staff followed legal frameworks when patients did not have the mental capacity at the time to provide their own valid consent. We observed how staff treated patient with kindness and compassion. There was a culture of commitment and teamwork. Leaders encouraged staff to speak up with ideas for innovation and improvement, however there was no clear strategy how to develop these or monitoring of the outcomes .
During our assessment, we found concerns which resulted in a breach of regulation in which we served a warning notice. We found breaches in regulation 12 in relation to safe care and treatment, regulation 15 premises and equipment and regulation 17 good governance. You can find more details of our concerns in the evidence category findings.
In instances where CQC has decided to take civil or criminal enforcement action against a provider, we will publish this information on our website after any representations and/or appeals have been concluded.
People's experience of this service
Patients and their family members we spoke with were positive about the staff caring for them. Patients told us staff treated them with kindness and provided good care and treatment. Patients said they did not feel anxious about raising concerns and felt they were listened to. Patient were able to maintain their dignity as much as possible, and staff were kind and acted with respect in interactions we observed.