Chief Inspector of Hospitals publishes his findings on Frimley Park Hospital

14 January 2014

England's Chief Inspector of Hospitals has published his first report on the quality of care provided by Frimley Park Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

Overall the report concludes that Frimley Park Hospital is providing patients with safe and effective care. Services were of a good standard at all times of day and night.  Patients said that they were satisfied with how staff had treated them and that doctors, nurses and other staff were caring and professional.   

The trust was one of the first to be inspected under radical changes introduced by the Care Quality Commission, which provide a much more detailed picture of care in hospitals than ever before.

An inspection team which included doctors, nurses, and hospital managers, trained members of the public, CQC inspectors and analysts spent two days at Frimley Park Hospital during November. They examined the care provided in accident and emergency, medical care (including older people’s care), surgery, intensive/critical care, maternity, children’s care, end of life care and outpatients. Inspectors also visited the hospital unannounced on one night.

The report which CQC publishes today is based on a combination of their findings, information from CQC’s Intelligent Monitoring system, and information provided by patients, the public and other organisations. The full report is available at Frimley Park Hospital.

The inspection team found many areas of good practice. These included:

• An emphasis on teamwork in A&E. Staff said that the management team was open and approachable which gave them the confidence to challenge poor practice and raise concerns.
• End of life care.
• Junior doctor support and education.
• An open culture of learning from incidents and accidents.
• A highly visible and outstanding leadership team.
• A number of warm and sensitive interactions between staff and patients. Inspectors said that the trust could improve its care for people with dementia. While staff were caring and compassionate, some needed further training.

CQC’s Chief Inspector, Professor Sir Mike Richards, said: “It is clear that Frimley Park Hospital has benefited from a stable, long-serving leadership, which remains focused on its strategy for improvement. The executive team’s passion for excellence has created a workforce of dedicated staff caring for people at Frimley Hospital.

“We found that the staff were overwhelmingly happy working at the trust, and we met many people, notably the consultants  who had returned to work at Frimley because of the experience they'd had here earlier in their careers.  The vast majority of patients who we met said that their experience of care had been positive, and we saw many examples of this.”

The Care Quality Commission has presented its findings to a local Quality Summit, including NHS commissioners, providers, regulators and other public bodies. The purpose of the Quality Summit was to develop a plan of action and recommendations based on the inspection team’s findings.

Ends

For media enquiries, call the CQC press office on 020 7448 9401 during office hours or out of hours on 07917 232 143.  

For general enquiries, call 03000 61 61 61.

Notes to editors

The Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Professor Sir Mike Richards, is leading significantly larger inspection teams than before, headed up by clinical and other experts including trained members of the public. Sir Mike is implementing his new approach to hospital inspection with 18 NHS trusts which represent variation of care across England. By the end of 2015, CQC will have inspected all acute NHS Trusts in the country with its new inspection model.