Nuffield Health has announced that all of its hospitals have now been rated as ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’ by UK regulators.
Nuffield Health’s Plymouth and Bournemouth hospitals recently received ‘Good’ ratings from the Care Quality Commission (CQC). They now join the healthcare charity’s 32 other hospitals across the UK rated ‘Good’ by UK regulators, with Nuffield Health’s Cambridge, Leeds and Chichester hospitals awarded ‘Outstanding’ CQC ratings.
The CQC ensures health and social care services in England provide people with safe, effective, compassionate and high-quality care. Nuffield Health Plymouth Hospital is now rated as ‘Good’ by the CQC after it was previously rated as ‘Requires Improvement’ after its last inspection in July 2015. The CQC inspectors highlighted the hospital’s surgical services and patient care in surgery highlighted as ‘Outstanding’ in the inspection report:
The service used innovative evidence-based approaches to improve patient care. This included the use of nurse-led research that had contributed towards a reduction in surgical site infections.
High performance was recognised by credible external bodies. For example, the hospital submitted data to the National Joint Registry and had achieved recognition as a quality data provider in the past two years. Quality indicators were above the national average and better than expected for hospital consent rate and hospital data link ability. All other indicators were in the expected range and the service performed above the national average for standardised revision ratio (SRR) knees.
Outcomes for people who used services were positive, consistent and regularly exceeded expectations. The hospital participated in patient reported outcome measures and patients reported consistently positive patient outcomes. For hip replacement, the percentage of patients reporting an improvement in Oxford Hip Score between six to nine months post discharge was 100% in 2019, 2020 and 2021. For knee replacements the percentage of patients reporting an improvement in Oxford Knee Score between six to nine months post discharge was 98% in 2019, 100% in 2020 and 95% in 2021. For cataracts surgery the hospital scored 100% in 2020 and 94% in 2021 for patients reporting an improvement between three to six months post discharge.
Nuffield Health Bournemouth Hospital also received a ‘Good’ rating after a ‘Requires Improvement’ rating when it was previously inspected in November 2016. The CQC report praised its ‘outstanding practice’ with the ‘local university and the orthopaedic institute on research into the effectiveness of joint replacement surgeries performed with robotic surgical equipment’. Additionally, the CQC’s inspection report also stated:
Staff treated patients with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity, took account of their individual needs and helped them understand their conditions. They provided emotional support to patients, families and carers.
The service planned care to meet the needs of local people, took account of patients’ individual needs, and made it easy for people to give feedback. People could access the service when they needed it and did not have to wait too long for treatment.
Ben Davies, Nuffield Health’s Interim Clinical Services Director, says: “We are committed to providing high-quality clinical care and expertise to people who live in the local communities that we serve. Therefore, we are delighted that our commitment towards quality has been recognised by the Care Quality Commission and national regulators in Wales and Scotland.
“This achievement is testament to the hard work of our teams across our network of 37 hospitals and healthcare clinics. They are committed towards clinical excellence and providing the very best care for our patients and it’s fantastic that our national regulators across the UK recognise this.”
