We have announced the eight acute, community and mental health providers that we will inspect in October 2015, as part of our comprehensive programme.
The inspections – which are carried out by a mixture of inspectors, clinicians, and Experts by Experience – will assess whether the service overall is: safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs and well-led.
Following the inspection, each provider will receive an overall rating of either: Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement or Inadequate. Additionally, each of the eight core services will also be rated in the same way to provide performance information at a service, hospital and trust level.
Our inspection regime allows us to get under the skin of services better than ever before and to provide a clear picture of what care is really like. We hope this encourages improvement and helps people to make informed choices about their care.
As of Tuesday 26 May, we have rated:
- 2 NHS trusts as Outstanding
- 28 as Good
- 52 as Requires Improvement
- 10 as Inadequate.
The providers listed below have been selected for their planned, comprehensive inspections for different reasons. These include hospitals that are priorities for inspection and those that are low risk, following our analysis of information, and a commitment to inspect different types of trusts in different parts of the country.
Inspections in October
The providers to be inspected in October for comprehensive inspections are:
Acute
- Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust
- The Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
- Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
- The Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
- East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust
Mental health
- 2gether NHS Foundation Trust
- Calderstones Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
Combined acute and community health services
- London North West Healthcare NHS Trust
Focused follow-up inspections
A comprehensive inspection is one that leads to an overall rating of the provider.
From now on, some of our planned inspections that follow up on previous visits to check that improvements have been made or those that focus on specific services or issues (known as a focused inspection) will be announced.
Our inspections that are in response to particular concerns (for example, based on information that we have received) are likely to remain unannounced.
In October, we will carry out a focused, follow-up inspection of:
- Wexham Park – now part of Frimley Health NHS Foundation trust (acute)
We will continue to announce our comprehensive inspections every month to give NHS providers 20 weeks' notice ahead of their planned inspections, which also include unannounced elements. Our focused inspections will be included in this announcement.
As outlined in our business plan, we expect to complete our inspections of acute NHS trusts by the end of March 2016, and our inspections of acute specialist, mental health, community healthcare and ambulance trusts by the end of June 2016.