- SERVICE PROVIDER
Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust
This is an organisation that runs the health and social care services we inspect
Assessment report published 23 April 2026
Contents
Ratings - Community health inpatient services
Our view of the service
Community inpatient wards across Lincolnshire are provided by Lincolnshire Community and Hospitals NHS Group (LCHG), which is made up of Lincolnshire Community Services NHS Trust (LCHS) and United Lincolnshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (ULTH).
Inpatient wards were last inspected by the Care Quality Commission in 2018 and were rated outstanding.
We carried out the following assessments of community inpatient services across the 4 hospitals in Lincolnshire between 3 – 17 February 2026.
Skegness Hospital, Gloucester and Scarbrough wards.
Louth Hospital, Archer ward.
John Coupland Hospital, Gainsborough, Scotter ward.
Johnson Community Hospital, Spalding, Welland ward.
Our assessments were unannounced (staff did not know we were coming), to enable us to observe routine activity.
During the assessments we:
Looked at 25 care records
Assessed the environment on each ward
Spoke with 29 staff
Spoke with 19 patients
Spoke with 3 carers
Attended one board round
Reviewed medicines administration and management systems on each ward.
Overall, we found the wards provided good standards of care, however on one ward we found some shortfalls in the consistency and quality of monitoring patient’s nutritional, hydration and pressure area needs as well as out of date clinical stock and a failure to maintain patient’s privacy and dignity.
We found managers failed to ensure robust governance processes were in place. We found irregular and inconsistent team meetings were taking place, which did not ensure learning was appropriately shared. Staff did not always respond to patients in a timely manner, and we saw their privacy and dignity was compromised on 2 separate occasions.
We found the following breach of The Health and Social Care Act (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014:
Regulation 17 – Good Governance
People's experience of this service
We spoke with 19 patients and 3 carers. Their feedback was mostly positive, however 3 patients and 2 carers said wards were sometimes short staffed, which led to care being delayed. We looked at a variety of cards, forms and emails thanking the ward teams for their care and kindness during their relatives' stay in hospital. Patients told us the quality of food was good, and the wards were always clean.