- NHS hospital
Blackpool Victoria Hospital
Assessment report published 29 June 2026
Contents
Ratings - Medical care (Including older people's care)
Our view of the service
Date of assessment 24 to 26 November 2025.
We carried out an unannounced assessment of medical care (including older people's care) to follow up on the findings of a previous inspection. We assessed the following service groups:
- Medical care (including older people’s care)
We assessed all quality statements from the safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led key questions. We looked at 10 sets of patient clinical records; we spoke with 26 patients, 8 family members or friends, and 32 members of staff.
We visited medical wards and attended clinical meetings, including safety briefs, nurse handovers, ward and board rounds and visited the pharmacy department.
We rated medical care (including older people's care) as good.
At the last inspection the service was in breach of safe care and treatment, good governance and staffing. The service had made improvements and we found areas had improved, however there were continued breaches of safe care and treatment, premises and equipment and staffing.
We have requested an action plan, this will be submitted after publication of the final report.
People's experience of this service
Patients, and any family or carers with them, were generally positive about the staff treating them with kindness and dignity and providing effective care and treatment. Most patients, and family or carers said that communication with them was good despite how busy the wards were. Patients did not report experiencing discrimination or inequality.
The service made reasonable adjustments for people with disabilities and communication difficulties. We used the short observational framework for inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a tool developed with the University of Bradford’s School of Dementia Studies. Inspectors use SOFI to capture the experiences of people who may not be able to express these for themselves.