- NHS hospital
Derriford Hospital
Report from 8 November 2024 assessment
Contents
Ratings - Urgent and emergency services
Our view of the service
Date of on-site assessment 12-13 March 2024. Dates of desktop assessment between 14 March to 10 May 2024. We carried out a responsive assessment of Urgent & Emergency Care (UEC) at Derriford Hospital in response to concerns shared with Care Quality Commission (CQC) regarding people accessing the Emergency Department (ED). We also reviewed evidence submitted from staff at the trust. We reviewed 4 key questions: Safe, Effective, Responsive and Well-led. The overall rating for this service is requires improvement. We rated the key questions and the service overall as requires improvement as we identified breaches of regulations. The trust was still failing to provide care and treatment in a safe way for service users.
People's experience of this service
During this assessment we spoke with patients who experienced long waits in ambulances and in the ED waiting room. There were long waits to be triaged, treated, referred on to another service, admitted or discharged. One patient said they had waited 24 hours to be admitted. However, some patients told us they had been assessed and treated relatively quickly. Patients gave positive feedback about staff, describing them as “great”, “brilliant” and “lovely”.