Clean bill of health for St Richard’s Hospital

The clean bill of health given to the hospital by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) completes a hat-trick for the Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust, following similarly glowing verdicts on Worthing Hospital and Southlands Hospital, Shoreham.

In the report on their visit to St Richard’s last month, the inspectors quote patients describing the hospital as “the best I have ever been in”, and commenting that St Richard’s provided “better service than a private hospital”.

A trust spokesman said gaining such positive feedback from the visit was doubly impressive because of the circumstances of the inspection. The CQC team were themselves under scrutiny from national auditors to make sure they were doing their job well, and they spent many hours touring the hospital and assessing how patient care measured up against nine standards – far more than normal.

On all the key yardsticks – providing patients with safe and appropriate care, treating patients with respect, keeping the environment clean, having enough staff, having well-trained staff, and keeping patients safe from the threat of abuse – St Richard’s was judged to comply with national standards, and inspectors found no areas where action was required.

Trust chief executive Marianne Griffiths said: “This report makes wonderful reading, because I hope it shows that people can have confidence in the standards of care that our staff provide.

“When you run a hospitals trust employing 6,500 people and treating hundreds of thousands of people a year you can never be complacent, because things can always go wrong, but this report is yet more evidence that on the whole our staff do an absolutely terrific job for our patients.

“Every day, our staff work extremely hard to do the best they possibly can for our patients, and this report reflects that. Some of the praise from patients that is quoted in the report is absolutely fantastic, and very well deserved by our staff.”

The visit was part of the CQC’s routine programme of checks.