Birmingham Heartlands Hospital

Ratings - Medical care (Including older people's care)

• Overall

  Requires improvement

• Safe

  Requires improvement

• Effective

  Requires improvement

• Caring

  Good

• Responsive

  Good

• Well-led

  Requires improvement

Our view of the service

The medical care services at the trust provides care and treatment for 10 specialties across the 4 main sites; Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, Birmingham Heartlands Hospital, Good Hope Hospital and Solihull Hospital. The trust had over 1500 inpatient medical beds, 462 of these beds being based at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital.

During our assessment we visited the respiratory ward (Ward 24), cystic fibrosis unit (Ward 26) and acute/hyper acute stroke ward (Ward 32). As part of our assessment, we looked at 6 patient records, spoke with 3 patients, 4 relatives and 8 members of staff including ward managers, a matron, a doctor, nurses and health care assistants.

As this assessment was based on risk, we only assesse quality statements which were connected to the areas of concern and therefore did not complete enough quality statements to re-rate the key questions and service overall. The ratings therefore remained the same as previous for each service. Medical care remained requires improvement for safe, effective and well-led and good for responsive.

We found:

There was evidence of a learning culture and patients were cared for in a safe environment. However, we did not always find that staffing was safe and effective.

There were processes in place to assess the needs of patients using evidence-based tools. However, we found staff were not always completing them in line with trust guidance.

Staff provided patients with patient-centred care and treatment.

There were governance processes in place and staff knew their roles and responsibilities. However, processes were not always effective.

People's experience of this service

During our onsite assessment, we spoke with 3 patients and 4 relatives. The feedback from them was mostly positive. They felt staff made them feel safe in the environments where they were admitted and included them in decisions about their care and treatment. They felt staff were aware of their needs and the care provided was patient-centred. However, there was concern raised by 1 patient about the length of time it had taken staff to respond to them when they had used their call bell.