Pilgrim Hospital

On this page

• Overview
• Assessing needs
• Delivering evidence-based care and treatment
• How staff, teams and services work together
• Supporting people to live healthier lives
• Monitoring and improving outcomes
• Consent to care and treatment

We rated effective as good. We assessed 2 quality statements. The service maximised the effectiveness of people’s care and treatment by assessing and reviewing their health, care, wellbeing and communication needs with them. The service told people about their rights around consent and respected these when they deliver person-centred care and treatment.

We have not awarded this service a score for Effective.

Find out about when we will not publish a key question score and what we look at when we assess Effective.

The acute trust and the community trust came together formally in April 2024 as the Lincolnshire Community and Hospitals NHS Group. This had enabled timely discussions and increased awareness of potential concerns across Lincolnshire, this enabled working together to streamline both acute and community services.

All staff worked as part of a multidisciplinary team. This enabled continuous assessment of the changing needs of patients. Staff worked with other specially trained professionals to support the patient with additional needs, to ensure that patients’ needs were met as far as was possible.

Senior staff we spoke with had an up-to-date overview of the accident and emergency department and the patients who required admitting to the wards. Patients we observed were assessed to determine the safest place for admission or transfer.

Staff explained they used an individualistic and comprehensive approach to assessing patient need. This was to ensure patients received care and treatment that was specific to their individual needs and took the whole person into account, their psychological health and wellbeing, practical and social needs, as well as their physical health.

Staff we spoke with told us about the use of safety huddles, medical handovers and nursing handovers that regularly took place during the day and included all necessary information to keep people safe whilst in the department and through transition to the wards.

Staff assessed and acted on risks to prevent avoidable patient harm, this included highlighted safeguarding issues which could be clinically relevant. Handovers and huddles included discussions about high-risk patients. Staff were encouraged to contribute, and there was effective communication and shared learning.

Managers told us they all made sure people, staff, loved ones and carers could get help from interpreters or British Sign Language when needed.

Staff explained the challenges within the medical wards and the discharge lounge in relation to patients being medically ready for discharge with no safe place to go. This could for example be discharge home with no support organised.

During the assessment visit there were 204 medical patients within the acute hospital. Forty-two of these were medically ready for discharge. This meant that 21% of patients were deemed to no longer have a medical reason to be in an acute hospital bed.

Staff used effective tools to support good clinical practice for patients living with mental health problems, learning disabilities and dementia, to ensure they received the necessary care to meet their needs.

The service had appropriate policies, protocols and patient pathways that were based on national guidance including The Rapid Flow Placement Procedure which set out the United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust (ULHT) standard operating procedure (SOP) for the Management of the Rapid Placement of Adult Patients across the hospitals within the Trust.

We did not look at Delivering evidence-based care and treatment during this assessment. There is no previous rating for the Effective key question so we cannot yet publish a score for this area.

We did not look at How staff, teams and services work together during this assessment. There is no previous rating for the Effective key question so we cannot yet publish a score for this area.

We did not look at Supporting people to live healthier lives during this assessment. There is no previous rating for the Effective key question so we cannot yet publish a score for this area.

We did not look at Monitoring and improving outcomes during this assessment. There is no previous rating for the Effective key question so we cannot yet publish a score for this area.

There were up-to-date policies and procedures, which were accessible to staff through the trust’s intranet site.

All the staff we spoke with explained how they obtained consent from patients to carry out care and manage information.

Staff clearly recorded consent in patient records. A review of patient records indicated that consent was recorded in line with trust policy.

Patients we spoke with told us staff did not provide any care without first asking their permission. In the patient records we reviewed, we saw copies of signed consent forms and evidence that consent to treatment was obtained appropriately. The consent process was also available on the trust website.