- NHS hospital
Castle Hill Hospital
Assessment report published 11 May 2026
Contents
Ratings - Medical care (Including older people's care)
Our view of the service
We conducted an on-site, assessment visit for medical care (including elderly care) on 18 to 20 November 2025 due to an aged rating. We assessed all quality statements from the safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led key questions. The assessment team included 3 CQC inspectors, 1 pharmacy specialist CQC inspector, 2 CQC specialist advisors and 1 regulatory coordinator. We reviewed 8 sets of patient clinical records, 6 respect forms and 8 medicine records and spoke with 84 members of staff, and a minimum of 19 patients and 6 relatives.
We attended several clinical meetings, including safety briefs, nurse handovers, ward, and board rounds and visited the pharmacy department.
The medical care core service (the service) operated across multiple care groups within Hull University Teaching Hospitals.
We assessed the following medical wards and units.
- Cardiovascular; Cardiology wards 26 and 28 and cardiac monitoring unit (CMU) and catheter labs.
- Specialist cancer and support services; most oncology wards, cancer assessment unit (CAU), day treatment unit and the infectious diseases ward 7.
- Community, frailty, and therapy; the frailty ward.
- Major trauma; the complex rehabilitation ward.
- Digestive diseases; the endoscopy unit in the new Allam Digestive Centre
We visited a number of surgical wards and spoke to staff about medical outlier patients who remained under the care of their medical specialty consultant.
This report presents our findings across the five care groups, informed by the evidence collected at the time of the assessment
We rated the service overall as requires improvement. This meant the service was not consistently meeting the standards expected for safe, high quality and well governed care. Whilst there were examples of good practice and positive staff and patient experience, further work was needed to strengthen governance, improve consistency and ensure that all aspects of care met regulatory requirements.
We found continued breaches of legal Regulations in relation to staffing. Key issues included a shortage of nursing and non-registered staff and training.
We found new breaches of legal Regulations in relation to good governance, safe care and treatment, receiving and acting on complaints and Duty of Candour. These reflected weaknesses in clinical oversight, the reliability of safety processes, the timeliness and quality of complaint handling, and the consistency of open and transparent communication with patients. Delays in access to care and gaps in monitoring, audit and data quality further demonstrated that systems to ensure safe, responsive, and well governed care were not fully effective.
However, staff demonstrated kindness and compassion, patients felt respected and cared for, and there was a positive culture of learning.
In instances where CQC has begun a process of regulatory action, we may publish this information on our website after any representations and/or appeals have been concluded, if the action has been taken forward. Or, if we have requested an action plan, this will be requested upon publication of the final report.
People's experience of this service
Patients praised staff for being kind, caring, and respectful, with many describing their care as “absolutely brilliant,” “marvellous” and “first class” and noted that nursing, healthcare assistants, and domestic staff routinely went above and beyond
Patients also told us that staff addressed them by their preferred name and were familiar with their personal preferences.