Blackpool Victoria Hospital

On this page

• Overview
• Person-centred Care
• Care provision, Integration and continuity
• Providing Information
• Listening to and involving people
• Equity in access
• Equity in experiences and outcomes
• Planning for the future

At our last assessment we rated this key question inadequate. At this assessment the rating has changed to requires improvement.

We looked for evidence that people and communities were always at the centre of how care was planned and delivered. We checked that the health and care needs of people and communities were understood, and they were actively involved in planning care that met these needs. We also looked for evidence that people could access care in ways that met their personal circumstances and protected equality characteristics.

This meant people’s needs were not always met.

We have not awarded this service a score for Responsive.

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

The service made sure people were at the centre of their care and treatment choices and they decided, in partnership with people, how to respond to any relevant changes in people’s needs.

Staff based patient care around individual needs and preferences. Staff supported patients living with dementia and learning disabilities by using, ‘This is me’ documents and ‘My Health Passport’ for autistic patients which contained information about the patients’ interests, how they communicated pain and what caused them distress.

Patients presenting with mental health needs were appropriately referred by nursing staff to the paediatric and mental health liaison teams for further assessment. The service also worked in partnership with the primary intermediate mental health team to provide effective care in the community, with a view to reduce visits to the emergency department.

The department had access to interpreters, including for British Sign Language when needed. Staff also had access to communication aids to help patients.

We saw positive interactions between staff and patients with complex needs to ensure they remained settled in the service. Staff made sure patients living with mental health problems, learning disabilities and dementia, received the necessary care to meet all their needs.

The service understood the diverse health and care needs of people and their local communities, so care was joined-up, flexible and supported choice and continuity.

The trust had implemented initiatives to reduce the time that patients spent in the emergency department once a decision was made to admit them. In December 2024 28% of patients waited in the department for more than 12 hours for a bed on a ward. This had reduced to 15% in November 2025. The initiatives implemented included redesigning the acute care model, improving ED to ward processes and introduction of a care coordination hub.

The trust were also working with the ambulance service to ensure that patients who did not require treatment in the emergency department could be taken to the urgent care centre.

Staff engaged with other healthcare providers both within the trust and external to the hospital to

ensure patients received appropriate follow-up care.

External partners, such as GPs, community nurses, and social workers were involved to enable continuity of care and support for discharge planning. The department had formal arrangements with other NHS Trusts and tertiary centres to facilitate seamless transfers of care where required.

The service supplied appropriate, accurate and up-to-date information in formats that were tailored to individual needs.

Staff provided patients, their families, and carers with information that was accessible, safe, secure, and supported their rights and choices. Patients were provided with relevant information about their condition, follow up care and treatment as required.

Posters within the service displayed QR codes for people to scan for information about common medical conditions and guidelines for patients and visitors that could be translated into different languages.

People’s individual needs to have information in an accessible way were identified, recorded, highlighted and shared. This included making reasonable adjustments for people with disabilities, interpreting and translating for people who did not speak English as a first language and for Deaf people who used British Sign Language. People who had difficulty with reading, writing, or using digital services were supported with accessible information.

Staff across the trust had information governance training, the trust compliance in November 2025 was 78% which was below the compliance rate of 90%. The roles yet to complete the training were non-patient facing.

The service made it easy for people to share feedback and ideas, or raise complaints about their care, treatment and support. They involved people in decisions about their care and told them what had changed as a result.

Staff and leaders could demonstrate how they actively listened to patients, families and carers, using feedback, concerns and complaints to drive improvements in care. Learning from incidents and patient experience was shared through targeted seven-minute briefings, including reviews of a patient who left the department before assessment and safeguarding learning relating to injuries in infants.

The service had effective systems for receiving, investigating and learning from complaints. Twenty-seven complaints were received in the previous six months, all completed within trust targets. Learning from complaints was shared with staff and used to improve practice. The top three complaint themes were related to long waits in the department to be seen and attitude and behaviour of staff. Patients and families could provide feedback through a variety of accessible routes, including patient surveys, complaints processes and engagement with volunteer patient representatives (‘The Listeners’). Following concerns raised by a patient and their family, senior nursing leaders worked collaboratively with the patient, relatives and multidisciplinary teams to develop personalised care plans for future admissions which was shared across the division. Similar partnership working was undertaken for a patient with complex needs resulting in an individualised care plan and enhanced staff training and competency arrangements.

The Trust reported 100% compliance with Duty of Candour, supported by a thematic review of 29 patient safety incident investigations.

The service did not make sure that people could access the care, support and treatment they needed when they needed it.

Staff made reasonable adjustments for patients; for example, people with mobility issues were provided with walking aids and wheelchairs in the department.

However, the number of people attending the department led to capacity constraints and patient flow challenges across the hospital some patients waited longer in the department for onward care. Between November  2023 to August 2025,  the  average time patients waited to be initially assessed was well above the average compared to other emergency departments. At the time of our assessment, the longest wait to be admitted we observed was for 23 hours 43 mins, for a patient with mental health needs.

NHS England’s UEC Care Plan 2025/26 sets a maximum of 45 minutes for ambulance handovers to ED. The service averaged 30 minutes for ambulance handover based on data for October 2025. There had been a slight deterioration from 91.5% of patients handed over within 45 minutes in September 2025 to 84.5% in October 2025. Between September and October 2025, a higher proportion of ambulance handovers at BVH took longer than 60 minutes when compared to the Integrated Care System (ICS), North West region and England figures. Overall, 13% of handovers took over 60 minutes, which was the eighth highest proportion across all regional Ambulance Service receiving hospitals. The 90th centile handover time was also generally above the regional average between April 2023 and September 2025. Whilst patients remained in ambulances waiting for handover, they are unable to access timely assessment, treatment and diagnostics within the emergency department. This also reduced ambulance availability in the community, potentially impacting response times for other patients requiring urgent and emergency care. Leaders had worked closely with ambulance providers to improve ways of working including implementing the care coordination hub.

The proportion of patients who left the department before being seen averaged at 8%. The service recognised this and had taken steps to improve the communication of waiting times to patients. Staff followed trust protocols if a patient who was deemed to be at high risk and in need of care and treatment and left the department without being seen.

We observed processes to support effective patient flow through the hospital. Patient flow, was at times, compromised within the ED we found staff worked collaboratively to own and share the risk across the trust. The ED had not been meeting the national 4‑hour performance target, however improvements were demonstrated over time. This meant access to care and treatment was improving. Over the previous 6 months, 52% of admitted patients were seen, treated, or admitted within 4 hours. During the same period, 21% of admitted patients waited between 4–12 hours from a Decision to Admit (DTA) to admission. In addition, 15% of admissions from the ED waited over 12 hours from DTA to admission.

Staff and leaders actively listened to information about people who are most likely to experience inequality in experience or outcomes and tailored their care, support and treatment in response to this.

Staff completed Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), Learning Disabilities, Autism and Neurodiversity training and mental health training. Staff followed processes that enabled them to deliver care and treatment in a way that did not disadvantage patients with protected characteristics.

People told us their needs and preferences were assessed and understood by staff. They told us they were treated in a non-discriminatory way.

Staff told us they treated people equally and without discrimination. They were able to give examples of how they respected the individual wishes of people with protected characteristics and people with communication or language difficulties or cognitive impairments.

There was at least 1 Learning Disability champion in each area throughout the trust. Learning Disability champions meet monthly and people with lived experience had attended to share their experiences of care at the trust.

For patients living with dementia, the service used the nationally recognised “This is me” document. ‘This is me' helps health and social care professionals better understand a patient’s needs, preferences and values beyond their dementia diagnosis. This supported staff to deliver care that is tailored to the person's needs. Used effectively, it can help to reduce distress for people with dementia and their carers. It can also help to overcome problems with communication and prevent more serious conditions such as malnutrition and dehydration.

The trust demonstrated several examples of workstreams that had been carried out to identify and address health inequalities. These included initiatives such as additional screening for blood‑borne viruses and a project called “All Views Matter”, which was developed in response to the lack of opportunity for non‑English‑speaking patients to provide feedback on their care. As a result of this project, the trust gained improved representation from the diverse communities it served.

The ‘All Views Matter’ team researched the six most commonly spoken languages in Lancashire: Urdu, Bengali, Kurdish (Sorani), Romanian, Polish, and Arabic. Friends and Family Test forms were then produced in all six languages on yellow A4 paper to ensure that patients with visual impairments were not excluded from using them. A poster was also developed to encourage these patients to request a form and provide feedback.

Staff aimed to remove any barriers to access for patients. There was an inclusive culture which prevented discrimination and inequalities, supported by training and guidance. Staff listened to people who had concerns or complaints and sought ways to improve the service.

People were supported to plan for important life changes, so they could have enough time to make informed decisions about their future, including at the end of their life.

People were supported to plan for important life changes, so they could have enough time to make informed decisions about their future, including about their care and plan their future care while they had the capacity to do so.

Care plans reviewed accurately reflected patients advanced care planning decisions.

The trust also offered the SWAN Bereavement Support to patients’ families.

Staff had access to the trust wide resuscitation policy and demonstrated a clear understanding of the trust do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation (DNACPR) policy.

Any patients being discharged without onward support for care needs had a discharge from the emergency department document completed by the nursing team caring for the patient.