- NHS hospital
Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham
Report from 21 January 2025 assessment
Contents
Ratings - Surgery
Our view of the service
The surgical service at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham is made up of theatres, a surgical day case unit, admissions lounge, discharge lounge, and 8 inpatient wards. These cover a number of specialities including orthopaedics, general surgery, colorectal, breast, upper gastroenterology, ear, nose and throat, maxillofacial, sarcoma, thoracic, burns and plastics, liver, renal, cardiac, neurosurgery and ophthalmology for adults. Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham treats only adult patients and young people from the age of 16 and over.
We conducted a planned unannounced on-site assessment of surgical services from 19 to 20 March 2025 due to concerns about some aspects of safety. As part of our assessment, we assessed the pre-assessment unit, wards THH5, 407, 408, 409, 410, 517, 620, 726, 728, ambulatory care and enhanced post-operative care and theatres.
We observed care and treatment and looked at 28 patient records and spoke with 15 patients and their relatives. We spoke with 79 members of staff including the senior leadership team, theatre managers, ward managers, scrub nurses, anaesthetists, consultants, healthcare assistants, recovery nurses, pre-operative assessment leads and staff nurses.
The service was previously inspected in June 2021 and was in breach of legal regulations in relation to safe care and treatment (Regulation 12) and equipment and premises (Regulation 15). Improvements were identified, and the service was no longer in breach of these regulations.
We assessed 31 quality statements across safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led. The rating following this assessment dropped to requires improvement overall with safe and responsive rated as requires improvement.
We identified a regulatory breach of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, Regulation 12: Safe Care and Treatment in relation to the proper and safe management of medicines, the safe use of equipment, and care and treatment being provided to people who use the service in a safe timely way.
Our rating for safe remained requires improvement, effective stayed as good, caring remained as good, responsive deteriorated to requires improvement and well led remained as good. The services overall rating was requires improvement.
There were concerns in the key question of safe around equipment, medicines and risk assessments. People were not able to get care and treatment in accordance with national standards due to recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, we found there was mostly a good safety culture and patients were cared for in a safe environment. Staff delivered good care and treatment following evidence-based practice and people had good outcomes. Staff were kind, caring and compassionate. People were always at the centre of how care was planned and delivered. Staff felt supported and guided by their leadership team. The service had a shared vision, strategy and culture. Leaders understood their responsibilities to their teams with supportive structures to ensure a bottom-up approach worked effectively. Leaders operated effective governance processes.
People's experience of this service
During our onsite assessment, we spoke with 15 patients and their relatives. Patients and any family or carers with them were all positive about the staff treating them with warmth and kindness and providing effective care and treatment. Staff made them feel at ease and gave them enough information to enable them to make informed decisions. They were provided with a range of treatment options and felt involved in their care.