- NHS hospital
William Harvey Hospital
Assessment report published 10 July 2026
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Date of assessment: 02 to 03 February 2026.
William Harvey Hospital provides a range of NHS hospital services. At this assessment we looked at Urgent and Emergency Care services. We assessed all quality statements across safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led key questions.
At this assessment we inspected 1 assessment service group, Urgent and Emergency care. We rated Urgent and Emergency Care as requires improvement. Please see reports from previous assessments to get a full picture of the services at William Harvey Hospital. William Harvey Hospital has maintained the rating of requires improvement overall.
At this assessment of Urgent and Emergency Care, we identified multiple breaches of regulations in relation to safe care and treatment and 1 breach in relation to dignity and respect. On both days of our assessment there was significant pressure on the department as the number of patients attending the emergency department consistently outstripped available capacity. This resulted in an increased risk to patients due to the crowded environment and staying in the department for long periods of time. Patients were not always cared for in an environment that met their needs. We saw delays in triage and monitoring of patients including long waits for medical reviews. The sustained level of attendance limited the services ability to deliver timely safe care in line with national standards. The department was OPEL (Operational Pressures Escalation Levels) 4 (the highest) and on the second day of our assessment the trust declared a critical incident. A trust declares a critical incident when exceptional demand or disruption causes them to lose the ability to provide essential, safe services, putting patient care at risk.