- NHS hospital
The Robert Jones & Agnes Hunt Hospital
Report from 14 October 2025 assessment
Contents
Ratings - Critical care
Our view of the service
The on-site assessment took place on the 23 May 2025. The assessment took place due to overdue inspection and out of date ratings. We have rated the service as Good overall.
The high dependency unit at The Robert Jones and Agnus Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust provides a service to patients who need high dependency care (described as level two). Care is provided to patients who have undergone extensive or complicated orthopaedic surgery, or who have been identified at their pre-operative assessment clinic as maybe requiring closer post-operative nursing care. The high dependency unit also provides care to patients who are being nursed on the general wards and whose condition is deteriorating clinically or are causing concern. Patients are also admitted in the event of surgical emergencies.
An outreach service is provided within the trust, which operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The team follows up all patients upon discharge from the high dependency unit to one of the wards, during service hours, to ensure good clinical progress continues. They attend to deteriorating patients on the general and surgical wards. The outreach role is a dual one as they also provide nursing cover to the whole hospital at night.
As of 30 March 2025, there were 4 adult critical care beds, of which 1 was occupied. Between 25 November 2024 and 30 March 2025, the trust has had between four to six open beds with an average monthly bed occupancy rate of 58%. The trust has had a comparable number of open critical beds and bed occupancy, over the past three years. Between January 2024 and January 2025, the High Dependency Unit (HDU) Hospital had an average of 21.96 care hours per patient day.
April 2025 figures:
Weekday bed occupancy at 2pm 48.51% against target 87.00%
Weekend bed occupancy at 2pm 40.63% against target 87.00%
Weekday bed occupancy at midnight 66.67% against target 87.00%
Weekend bed occupancy at midnight 38.71% against target 87.00%.
People's experience of this service
Overall, people's experience of the service was positive. Patients and relatives spoke positively about staff, who were kind, explained their care and treatment, answered call bells quickly and provided pain relief when required. Patients consistently rated feeling able to talk to staff and feeling they were treated with dignity and respect above the national average in surveys. We viewed a number of thank you cards from patients and their loved ones on display.