The Chief Inspector of Hospitals has rated University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which provides acute and specialist services in five hospitals in central London, as Good overall.
UCLH was rated Good for being effective, caring, responsive and well-led. It was rated Requires Improvement for being safe.
Care Quality Commission Inspectors visited UCLH in March. The inspectors rated surgery, critical care, maternity and gynaecology, services for children, and outpatients and diagnostic imaging as Good. Emergency care and medical care were rated as Requires Improvement.
University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is made up of University College Hospital (UCH) and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Wing, UCH at Westmoreland Street, UCH Macmillan Cancer Centre, the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine, the Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital and the Eastman Dental Hospital.
Professor Ted Baker, Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals, said: “Throughout UCLH we saw areas of good and outstanding practice. There was outstanding local leadership in critical care with high levels of staff and patient engagement.
“In maternity and gynaecology we saw examples of outstanding practice including several integrated one stop services providing an efficient diagnosis and treatment facility.
“We found all staff to be dedicated, caring and supportive of each other and we found patient feedback to be overwhelmingly positive.
“However, there were also some areas where the trust needs to make improvements. Patients in the emergency department experienced delays in initial assessment, and incidents were going unreported due to pressure on staff. The emergency department did not meet Royal College of Emergency Medicine recommendations that an emergency department should provide consultant cover 16 hours per day seven days per week.”
The report highlights a number of areas of outstanding practice including:
- There was outstanding local leadership in critical care with high levels of staff and patient engagement
- In surgery, staff demonstrated good knowledge of reporting, investigating and learning from incidents
- There were on-going improvements in the use of the World Health Organisation five steps to safer surgery checklist.
The inspection has also identified areas for improvement which include:
- Mandatory training targets were not being met consistently
- Documentation and patient records across medical wards was inconsistent and sometimes of poor quality
- The trust performed consistently worse than the England average for diagnostic waiting times in 2014-15.
Ends
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Throughout UCLH we saw areas of good and outstanding practice. There was outstanding local leadership in critical care with high levels of staff and patient engagement.
Professor Ted Baker, Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals