Good Hope Hospital

Updated 20 August 2025

This was an assessment of 4 services at Good Hope Hospital, namely medical care (including care of older people), services for children and young people, maternity services, and urgent and emergency care (A&E). Each of these services, with the exception of those for children and young people, had been assessed previously. The overall location rating of ‘insufficient evidence to rate’ is used as we have not assessed all the services provided yet for Good Hope Hospital, and we cannot therefore rate the location overall. 

Good Hope Hospital is an acute general hospital in Sutton Coldfield. The hospital is part of University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust and serves north Birmingham, Sutton Coldfield and a large part of south east Staffordshire including Burntwood, Lichfield and Tamworth.

At this inspection, many of the ratings previously given for the 3 services that had been rated had improved. Services for children and young people have been rated for the first time as good.

Medical care (including care for older people) had improved from a rating overall of inadequate to requires improvement. The rating for well-led had improved from inadequate to good, and we reported on "strong, supportive and visible leaders." However, there was still work to do in other areas.

Maternity services remained requires improvement overall, but the rating of inadequate for well-led had improved to requires improvement with notable improvements in culture. 

Services for children and young people are rated for the first time as good, but with requires improvement in safe, with more work to do in that key question. The other key questions were all rated as good.

Urgent and emergency care (or A&E) services improved from an inadequate rating to requires improvement. The ratings in safe of inadequate improved to requires improvement, and well-led improved from inadequate to good with notable changes in leadership and culture. Effective and caring both improved from requires improvement to good. Responsive remained requires improvement with the department under significant system pressures, crowding and a lack of flow which meant there were long waits in the department due to a lack of available beds elsewhere in the hospital. However, there had been good progress and the department had notably improved.

Updated 20 January 2025

This assessment was conducted to follow up on concerns and breaches of regulation identified during our previous assessment published in June 2023. At that inspection we reviewed safe and well-led key questions. The other key questions were last inspected in 2019.

We reviewed 25 quality statements across the 5 key questions: Safe, Effective, Caring, Responsive, and Well-led. The ratings for these areas have been combined with those from the previous assessment to determine the overall rating.

We identified 2 breaches of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, in relation to Regulation 12: Safe care and treatment and Regulation 17: Good Governance. Key issues included delays in triage and care, incomplete or inaccurate care records, the absence of appropriate risk assessments, and ineffective use of governance systems.

Despite these concerns, we observed improvements in the service's culture since our last visit. Although the service and its staff strived for a positive safety culture, this was not always maintained. Not all incidents were being reported although when they were, they were investigated and learning shared to support good practice. However, many were significantly delayed. People were treated with kindness and compassion, their preferences were respected, and they were actively involved in decisions about their care.

Leadership was strong, with visible, knowledgeable, and supportive leaders who encouraged staff development. Staff demonstrated a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities. There was a culture of continuous improvement, with staff given time and support to explore new ideas.

The service was receiving support from NHS England to drive improvements in safety and quality.

We refer to women in this report, but we recognise some transgender men, non-binary people, and people with variations in sex characteristics or who are intersex may also use services and experience some of the same issues.

Updated 20 January 2025

We carried out this assessment due to the rating of inadequate for the service following the previous inspection in April 2023 and the concerns associated with this. Following this inspection, conditions on the provider's registration were imposed. However, the service had provided evidence since that inspection to satisfy us the conditions had been met. We therefore returned to complete an onsite assessment to review how these improvements had been embedded.

During our assessment we visited wards 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 23, 24, 28 acute medicine unit, endoscopy and the discharge lounge which were attributed to the medical service. We also visited wards 2, 16 and 29 where medical patients were admitted on non-medical wards. We spoke with 74 staff which included matrons, consultants, nurses, junior doctors, nurse associates, healthcare assistants, allied health professionals, flow coordinators, domestic staff, student nurses and ward clerks. We observed care and treatments and reviewed 22 complete patient records and an additional 18 medicine records.

We assessed 25 quality statements across the safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led key questions and have combined these scores with the scores from the last inspection to give the current rating. The rating following this assessment improved to requires improvement overall, with caring and well-led rated as good.

We found a breach of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 in relation to Regulation 9 Person Centred Care and Regulation 12 Safe Care and Treatment. This related to the concerns identified within the resuscitation and escalation of treatment documentation completed for patients (Regulation 9) and medication concerns, flow and capacity concerns and the resuscitation training compliance which was below the trust target across most of the wards within the service (Regulation 12).

However, the service had a good learning culture and people could raise concerns. Managers investigated incidents thoroughly. People were protected and kept safe. Staff understood and managed risks, and there were now enough staff to provide care to patients.

Staff delivered care based on latest evidence and good practice. People always had enough to eat and drink to stay healthy. Staff monitored people’s outcomes. However, these were not always positive or consistent. Staff made sure people understood their care and treatment to enable them to give informed consent.

Staff treated people with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity, took account of their individual needs, and helped them understand their conditions. Staff mostly responded to people in a timely way. The service supported staff wellbeing.

The service provided information people could understand. People knew how to give feedback and were confident the service took it seriously and acted on it.

The service was mostly led by strong, supportive and visible leaders. There had been improvements in the culture of the service and the governance and risk management processes used by the service.

Updated 20 January 2025

Good Hope Hospital is part of University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. The hospital’s children’s and young people’s service has one children’s ward which was also known as the children’s assessment unit or ward 6 (we will call it the children’s ward), children’s outpatients, and a neonatal unit.

The children’s ward was an area for children and young people to be assessed and any further care or treatment to be identified. After assessment, children would either be able to be treated on the ward, be discharged home, or transferred for more complex care and treatment needs to the trust’s children’s services at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital. Any highly specialised services not provided by the trust would involve arrangements for children to be transferred to specialist paediatric services. The neonatal unit looked after new-born babies who needed extra support.

This was the first inspection for services for children and young people since the trust was established in 2018. It was a comprehensive inspection of all quality statements. We rated the service as good for all the key questions.

During the assessment we spoke with 13 patients and some of their family members and we reviewed 10 patient records. We spoke with 25 staff members including a ward manager, nurses, healthcare assistants, doctors, domestic cleaning staff, student nurses, ward clerks, safeguarding leads, and the mental health champion.

Updated 20 January 2025

We carried out this assessment following information of concern around waiting times, poor performance indicators and to follow up on the previous Warning Notice and breaches of regulation.

We inspected 25 quality statements across the safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led key questions and have combined the scores for these areas with scores from the last inspection to give the rating.

We found a breach of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, in relation to Regulation 12: Safe care and treatment. People could still not access care and treatment when they needed it. There was crowding within the department daily and lack of flow meant patients waited for long periods of time on ambulances and within the department

However, there was a good safety culture where events were investigated, and learning was embedded to promote good practice. Staff provided safe care and treatment, and the environment had improved and was now safer and well maintained. When the department was busy, leaders increased staffing levels to meet the needs of their patients.

Staff delivered good care and treatment following evidence-based practice and people had good outcomes. Staff were kind, caring and compassionate.

The department and staff were well-led by strong leaders who embodied the cultures and values of their workforce. There was improved governance and risk management, and a positive culture.

Updated 16 April 2025

Good Hope Hospital provides a range of emergency and elective surgery for the local population, both as inpatients and day-case patients. Specialties provided by the hospital includes trauma and orthopaedics, general surgery and gynaecology. There are 5 surgical wards within the hospital, Wards 2, 7, 16, 17 and 29 and also a surgical assessment unit and day surgery unit.

During our onsite assessment, we spoke with 52 staff of all roles and responsibilities, 8 patients and 2 carers. We reviewed 14 patient records including consent forms and WHO checklists.

We found the service did not ensure patients were safe at all times and staff did not always learn from incidents. Patients were not always able to access the service due to the demand for hospital beds for other patients. The service did not always demonstrate effective governance processes.

However, the service had processes to ensure staff worked well together and patients received kind and compassionate care and had their medicines administered in line with policy and legislation.

Along with the warning notice issued for failures in governance, we have issued requests for action plans against a number of regulations. These are:

Regulation 12 (1) (2) (c): Safe care and treatment. The service did not ensure safe care and treatment was provided in a safe way as it was not ensuring the persons providing care or treatment had the qualifications, competence, skills and experience to do so safely. Some staff in wards reported they did not have training to use all items of equipment. Staff in recovery had only received basic life support training yet were caring for vulnerable patients.

Regulation 15 (1) (b): Premises and equipment. The service did not ensure all equipment was secure. Some resuscitation trolleys did not have tamper-evidence mechanisms and items were known to have gone missing. No action had been taken following audit to rectify the issue.

Regulation 18 (1) (a): Staffing. The service must have sufficient numbers of suitably qualified, competent, skilled and experienced staff. Staff must receive such appropriate support, training, professional development, supervision and appraisal as is necessary to enable them to carry out the duties they are employed to perform. There were insufficient staff in the service to safety provide care and treatment at all times. Not all staff had updated their safeguarding training. There was insufficient evidence to demonstrate what training had been completed in some subjects.

Updated 6 February 2020

We carried out an unannounced focused inspection of the diagnostic imaging service at Good Hope Hospital on 22 August 2019, in response to concerning information we had received in relation to a serious incident. We did not inspect any other core services, or any other locations provided by University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust.

We did not cover all key questions or lines of enquiry and we did not rate this service at this inspection. We inspected elements of safe, responsive and well led.