- NHS hospital
Peterborough City Hospital
Report from 26 June 2024 assessment
Contents
Ratings - Urgent and emergency services
Our view of the service
The North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust (NWA NHS FT) was formed on 1 April 2017 when Peterborough and Stamford NHS Foundation Trust merged with Hinchingbrooke Health Care NHS Trust. The trust provides acute hospital services across three sites as well as community clinics at Doddington, Ely and Wisbech. They provide care for approximately 850,000 people.
The Urgent and Emergency Care (U&EC) services at Peterborough City Hospital consists of an Emergency Department (ED) and Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC).
The U&EC service is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and provides clinical services to treat patients presenting with a range of emergency problems.
The department has an 8 bedded resuscitation area, 26 cubicles/trolley spaces in majors, dedicated paediatric ED, an area designated for dressed patients with their usual level of mobility with reclining chairs and an assessment area called “fit to sit”, ear nose and throat and eye room, minor operations room, plaster room. The UTC is next to the ED.
We undertook this unannounced assessment following information of concern relating to waiting times, complaints about staff and quality of care, poor discharges, and management of patients with mental health conditions. The assessment commenced on 26 June 2024 and included an unannounced visit on 30 and 31 July 2024. We inspected 17 quality statements across the safe, effective, responsive and well-led key questions and have combined the scores for these areas from the last inspection to give the rating. Following this assessment the service has remained an overall rating of requires improvement. We identified that there were concerns about: space to accommodate the potential number of people in certain areas, sepsis screening, checks on emergency equipment, completion of risk assessments including mental health patients, staffing levels in children and young people's services and mandatory training levels.
People's experience of this service
Patients and any family or carers with them were generally positive about the staff treating them with kindness and dignity and providing effective care and treatment. On occasions patients had to wait to be treated for a long time after an initial assessment. Most people and family or carers said that communication with them was good despite how busy the department was. People generally could access care, treatment and support. People did not experience discrimination or inequality. People with additional needs did not feel disadvantaged. The service made reasonable adjustments for people with disabilities and communication difficulties.