Huddersfield Royal Infirmary

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

• Overall

  Good

• Safe

  Requires improvement

• Effective

  Good

• Caring

  Good

• Responsive

  Good

• Well-led

  Good

Our view of the service

We conducted an on-site assessment of medical care (including elderly care) on 13, 14 & 15 January 2026 in response to concerns raised to us around safe care and treatment.

We assessed all quality statements from the safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led key questions.

The assessment team included three CQC inspectors, two pharmacy specialist CQC inspectors and two CQC specialist advisors.

We reviewed 20 sets of patient clinical records and spoke with 70 members of staff, as well as 17 patients and family members. We attended several clinical meetings, including safety briefs, nurse handovers and ward rounds. In addition, we assessed most medical wards, the discharge lounge, and Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) for frailty.

We rated the service as good overall which stayed the same since the last inspection. With safe rated as requires improvement, effective, caring, responsive and well rated as good.

Staff demonstrated kindness and compassion, patients felt respected and cared for, and there was a positive culture of learning. The service showed good practice in workforce well-being and had effective multidisciplinary collaboration and community engagement.

However, we found continued breaches of legal regulations in relation to regulation 12 safe care and treatment relating to safe staffing, mandatory and safeguarding training compliance and medicines management (see specific headers for summary).

We also found breaches in regulation 17 (good governance) relating to inconsistent record keeping on the electronic patient record and non-adherence to trust policy.

People's experience of this service

We reviewed a range of patient experience information, including Friends and Family Test (FFT) feedback and CQC national patient survey results.

Patients praised staff for being kind, caring and respectful, with many describing their care as “brilliant”, “marvellous” and “first class” and that “nursing, healthcare assistants and domestic staff go above and beyond”.

Patients commented that staff called them by their preferred name and knew their personal preferences.