Northampton General Hospital

Updated 23 March 2026

Northampton General Hospital provides general acute services for a population of 426,500 in West Northamptonshire.

Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust provide critical care services at Northampton General Hospital for patients requiring Level 2 and Level 3 care including a general Intensive Care Unit (ICU), and critical care outreach. The new CCU opened on June 29, 2022. The CCU has 16 specialist beds of which five are isolation rooms fitted with clean air technology designed to prevent the spread of illnesses and support patients with immune issues.

CCU care is staffed by a team of more than 150 multi-disciplinary staff who provide one-to-one, or sometimes two-to-one, care for patients and their families, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Patients are nursed on the unit for short-stay episodes, but some remaining on the unit for a lot longer, up to 100 days. Many of these journeys involve lengthy specialist rehabilitation before patients are able to leave.

The critical care outreach team provides a Trust-wide service to all adult wards, providing support for all staff caring for at risk, acutely and critically ill patients. The team is also responsible for following up patients after discharge from the CCU to optimise their recovery. The service sees and cares for patients who are very ill or at risk of becoming very ill requiring close observation, monitoring and life support.

Updated 12 August 2025

Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust provide critical care services at Northampton General Hospital for patients requiring Level 2 and Level 3 care (level 3 beds require 1 nurse to each patient and level 2 beds 1 nurse between 2 patients). This includes a general intensive care unit (ICU), and critical care outreach. The new CCU opened on June 29, 2022. The ICU has 16 specialist beds of which five are isolation rooms fitted with clean air technology designed to prevent the spread of illnesses and support patients with immune issues.

ICU care is staffed by a multi-disciplinary team who provide one-to-one, or sometimes two-to-one, care for patients and their families, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The critical care outreach team provides a trust-wide service to all adult wards. The team is also responsible for following up patients when they move from ICU to a ward. The service sees and cares for patients who are very ill or at risk of becoming very ill, requiring close observation, monitoring and life support.

A team of 2 CQC inspectors and a specialist advisor visited the service on 19 August 2025. We spoke to 23 staff (including doctors, nurses, managers, pharmacists, allied health physiotherapists and housekeeping staff) and 1 patient. We looked at 5 sets of patients notes and attended the multidisciplinary ward round.

The last inspection to Northampton General Hospital critical care was undertaken in July and August 2017 and was rated good overall, with a good rating in all key questions. This assessment reviewed the safe and well led domains only. We rated both safe and well led as good.

Updated 17 October 2025

Medical Care (MC) services at Northampton General Hospital are provided by Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust. We carried out this assessment to check the quality of services in response to a Section 29A Warning Notice (WN) we served to the trust in March 2025 following an onsite assessment in February 2025. The WN required the trust to make improvements in relation to the systems and processes to manage effective patient flows and records. At our assessment in February 2025, we rated the MC service as requires improvement overall.

We assessed 4 quality statements across the key questions safe and well-led. These quality statements related to the areas of improvement required in the WN.

Our concerns were with processes and governance issues which could be reviewed remotely. We asked the trust for various documents and assessed them for evidence that improvements had been made.

Following a review of the information provided by the trust, we are satisfied that improvements have been made and the requirements of the WN have been met.

We did not rate this service at this assessment. The previous rating of requires improvement overall remains. We found:

• The introduction of electronic recording and systems had resulted in discharge planning starting earlier in the patient’s journey and reduced reporting errors.
• Processes had been introduced to identify and escalate concerns with patient flow.
• The trust has a strategy to raise awareness of the new discharge processes and promotion with staff.
• Waiting times in the discharge lounge have improved.
• Closer working with stakeholders to introduce a regional wide discharge process.
• Governance metrics have been introduced and reported against. However, at the time of the inspection there was insufficient data collected to evaluate the full impact of the provider’s actions.
• There was evidence of innovative actions such as the inclusion of the transport manager at daily discharge meetings, a dedicated ‘discharge doctor’ and the introduction of a trusted assessor.

Whilst improvements had been made, managers recognised continued improvements were required to fully embed and maintain the changes overtime. We are monitoring the progress of improvements to services and will re-inspect them as appropriate.

Updated 17 July 2025

Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) services at Northampton General Hospital are provided by Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust. They provide general acute services for a population of 426,500 in West Northamptonshire and hyper-acute stroke, vascular and renal services to people living throughout the whole of Northamptonshire. The hospital is also an accredited cancer centre and provides cancer services to a wider population of 880,000 who live in Northamptonshire and parts of Buckinghamshire.

We carried out this assessment to check the quality of services in response to a Section 29A Warning Notice (WN) we served to the trust in March 2025 following an onsite assessment in February 2025. The WN required the trust to make improvements in relation to the potential of harm to patients in the emergency department, systems and processes to manage patient flow and privacy and dignity. At our assessment in February 2025, we rated the UEC service as requires improvement overall. The safe key line of enquiry was rated as inadequate.

During this inspection we assessed 5 quality statements across the key questions safe, caring, and well-led. These quality statements related to the areas of improvement required in the WN.

We visited all areas of the Emergency Department (ED). We reviewed the environment, looked at care records and spoke to staff and patients. We spoke with 7 patients and 14 staff members across various grades. We observed meetings, reviewed performance information about the trust and observed how care and treatment was provided.

Following a review of all the evidence from this follow-up assessment and a review of additional information provided by the trust before and after our inspection, we are satisfied that improvements have been made in line with the requirements of the WN.

We did not rate this service at this assessment. The previous rating of requires improvement overall remains.

At this inspection we found:

There was a greater awareness of the risks to people across their care journey. Improvements had been made to systems and processes to support flow through the department. Risks were assessed, and people and staff understood them. Staff assessed patients risks of developing a pressure ulcer or skin damage.

The service treated people with kindness, empathy and compassion. The service made changes in the environment to maintain patients’ privacy and dignity. Corridor care had been significantly reduced.

Trust wide response to operational pressures within the emergency department had improved. Processes were in place for operational pressures to be escalated to directorate and trust wide leaders. A programme of improvement was in place with clear lines of accountability. A programme of audits had been implemented, and lessons were learned from this.

Whilst improvements had been made, managers recognised continued improvements were required to fully embed and maintain the changes. Environmental upgrades were underway to further improve the safety of patients and flow within the department. These additional building improvements had not been completed at the time of our assessment. We continue to monitor the progress of improvements to service and will re-inspect them as appropriate in line with our process.

Updated 11 March 2024

Northampton General Hospital (NGH) provides general acute services for a population of 426,500 in West Northamptonshire and hyper-acute stroke, vascular and renal services to people living throughout the whole of Northamptonshire. The hospital is also an accredited cancer centre and provides cancer services to a wider population of 880,000 who live in Northamptonshire and parts of Buckinghamshire. We rated this service under our previous methodology in February 2023 , where it was rated requires improvement overall.

As part of this assessment, we visited The Head and Neck ward, part of the trust's surgical division, which provided post operative surgical care . We visited on 6 March 2024 to check suitable care, equipment and processes were in place to reduce the risk of patients falling. This assessment was prompted by information we held about this service. We assessed a total of 9 quality statements.

We looked at all the quality statements under the key questions, Safe, Effective and Well-led. At the last inspection, the surgery service was rated good. During this assessment, we found the service had suitable safeguards in place to reduce the risk of patients falling. However, we raised concerns with the provider about ward layout, discrepancies between care plans and how care was being provided and process in place to monitor compliance with the service's falls prevention policies. After our assessment the service’s rating remained the same.

Updated 8 November 2017

We rated this service as good because:

• There was a well-embedded culture of incident reporting and staff said they received feedback and learning from incidents.
• Safety thermometer data from the last 12 months reported 100% of “harm free” care in the child health directorate.
• There were clear arrangements in place to safeguard children and young people from abuse, which reflected relevant legislation and local requirements. The majority of staff had undertaken the required level of safeguarding training.
• The service performed well in a number of national audits including the National Neonatal Audit (2015) and the epilepsy 12 audit (2014). Gosset ward was working towards achieving Bliss accreditation.
• Staff had the clinical skills, knowledge, and experience they needed to carry out their roles effectively. Mandatory training and appraisal levels were above trust targets.
• Actual nurse staffing levels met planned rotas during our inspection and patient’s needs were met. Medical staffing was appropriate and there was an effective level of cover to meet patients’ needs.
• Feedback from children and parents was consistently positive and parents told they were treated with dignity and respect.
• Services were responsive to the needs of patients, parents and families and were working towards delivering sustainable seven-day services.
• Staff felt that local leadership was strong with visible supportive and approachable managers.
• The child health directorate was continually developing patient services to ensure innovation, improvement, and sustainability.

However:

• There were not always effective systems in place regarding the storage and handling of medicines in the children’s outpatient department. The trust took immediate action to address this once we raised it as an urgent concern.
• Children or young people on Paddington ward could access the corridor to the delivery suite. This was a risk particularly for patients who may be at risk of self-harm or suicide. The trust took immediate action to address this once we raised it as an urgent concern.

• The pathway for patients who needed to cross the road between buildings had not been reassessed to ensure opportunities to prevent or minimise further harm were not missed. The trust took immediate action to address this once we raised it as an urgent concern.
• The child abduction policy was in draft and awareness was lacking in some areas of the service. The trust took immediate action to address this once we raised it as an urgent concern.

Updated 23 May 2017

We rated the service as good overall. Many improvements had been made to raise the profile for the end of life care service in the trust and this had led to improvements in the way patients received safe, compassionate care in their last days. However, more work was required to collect performance information about the service and ensure that mental capacity assessments underpinning decisions about cardiopulmonary resuscitation were being evidenced in patients’ records.

Updated 24 February 2023

Updated 8 November 2017

Overall, we rated outpatients and diagnostics as good. We inspected but did not rate the effectiveness of the service, as we are currently not confident that we are collecting sufficient evidence to rate this key question for outpatients and diagnostic imaging. We rated this service as good because:

• Staff were aware of their responsibilities and understood the need to raise concerns and report incidents. Staff told us they felt fully supported when raising concerns.
• Generally, the design, maintenance, and use of facilities and premises met patients’ needs. The maintenance and use of equipment kept patients safe from avoidable harm. Improvements had been made in some areas in the outpatient environment, which included the expansion of the chemotherapy suite and new equipment in the diagnostic imaging department.
• Appointments were prioritised according to referral requests from GPs with urgent requests and cancer referrals booked within two weeks. The imaging department prioritised reporting higher risk examinations not seen by other clinicians.
• We found that medical and nursing staffing levels and skill mix were planned and reviewed so that patients received safe care and treatment.
• Care and treatment was delivered in line with national guidelines. Staff within the service had the appropriate skills, qualifications, and knowledge to complete their roles safely.
• All teams reported effective multidisciplinary working.
• Patients were treated with compassion, dignity, and respect.
• Feedback from patients and those close to them was positive about the way they were treated.
• Staff made patients’ appointments according to the needs of the individual. This included moving them to allow work and other appointments to take place.
• The service consistently met the referral to treatment standards over time. Waiting times for diagnostic procedures was lower than England average. The service was meeting cancer targets for referral to treatment times at the time of the inspection.
• The "did not attend" (DNA) rate for the trust from June 2016 to May 2017 was 7% and this was same as the England average of 7%.
• Outpatient specialties ran additional evening and weekend clinic lists to reduce the length of time patients were waiting. The radiology department offered a walk in service for all plain film examinations.
• Services were tailored to meet the needs of individuals and offered flexibility in choice with appointments being flexed across a seven day service within the diagnostic imaging department.
• The service had a challenging and innovative strategy that supported the trust vision. This included redesign of departments, introduction of support systems to improve performance and repatriation of services to improve patient experience.
• Staff had awareness of the trust vision and strategy. Staff were aware of the risks within their departments. Staff were proud to work at the hospital and passionate about the care they provided.
• The service had leadership, governance and a culture which were used to drive and improve the delivery of quality person-centred care.
• Staff felt that managers were visible, supportive and approachable. Specialties were focused on developing services to improve patient care.

However, we also found that:

• We found concerns about the fire exit in the fracture clinic. This had been addressed by the unannounced inspection and we found the service had also reviewed all fire exits throughout the service.
• We observed poor infection control practices in both the blood-taking unit and the pain relief clinic. We raised this with the service, and immediate actions were taken to review infection control precautions to mitigate risk. This had been addressed by the unannounced inspection.
• We found issues with the storage of controlled drugs in the pain relief clinic. However, when we raised this with the service, senior managers took immediate action to address storage of these drugs. This had been addressed by the unannounced inspection.
• Not all staff had received the required frequency of mandatory training, including safeguarding. Plans were in place to address this.
• We observed poor infection control practices in both the blood-taking unit and the pain relief clinic. We raised this with the service and this had been rectified by the time of our unannounced inspection.