Nuffield Health Haywards Heath Hospital is operated by Nuffield Health. The hospital primarily
serves the communities of mid Sussex. It also accepted patient referrals from outside this area. The hospital had 27 beds. Facilities included three operating theatres, including one with laminar flow, a two-bedded area for closer post-operative observation, and outpatient and diagnostic facilities.
The hospital provided surgery, medical care, services for children and young people, and outpatients and diagnostic imaging. The main service provided by this hospital is surgery.
We previously visited this hospital in November 2016 as part of our national programme to inspect and rate all independent healthcare providers. We inspected all core services at the hospital, which incorporated all the activity undertaken. We rated both surgery and outpatients and diagnostic imaging as ‘good’ overall.
Within the outpatient and diagnostic service we found a breach of regulation relating to the maintenance of patient records. This breach related to both adults and the children’s services within the outpatients department. If a service is in breach of regulations it means we cannot give a rating higher than requires improvement within that domain. For this reason the service had a 'required improvement' rating in safe for services for children and young people and outpatients and diagnostic imaging.
We told the hospital it must:
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Securely maintain an accurate, complete and contemporaneous record in respect of each service user, including a record of the care and treatment provided to the service user and of decisions taken in relation to the care and treatment provided.
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Records must be kept secure at all times and only accessed, amended, or securely destroyed by authorised people.
The hospital was in breach of one regulation in relation to this:
Regulation 17 HSCA (RA) Regulations 2014 Good governance (17(2) (c)
We found an area of practice that required improvement in services for children and young people:
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Services did not meet the needs of their young patients fully because many facilities were shared inappropriately with adults, resulting in a lack of privacy and dignity for young patients, and there was a lack of resources available for this patient group.
We told the hospital that it must give us an action plan showing how it would bring services into line with the regulations. The hospital provided a comprehensive report on the actions it planned to take and updated us on progress, as the issues were resolved.
The purpose of our inspection on 17 October 2017 was to see if the hospital had made the necessary changes outlined in the action plan provided. During this follow up inspection we focused on the action plan and the areas of concern highlighted in the previous report. We did not inspect any parts of the surgery core service, and focused on patient records in line with the breach of regulation and the provision for children’s services only.
We cannot re-rate these services due to the period of time that had elapsed since the comprehensive inspection, therefore the rating for safe for outpatients and diagnostic imaging remains requires improvement. However, during this inspection we were assured that the hospital had met all the required improvements, recommendations and were no longer in breach of the regulations.
The hospital had significantly improved and had taken action to comply fully with regulations and we found:
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Patients now have a full set of hospital records. These include outpatient activity
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Secure storage facilities were now in place for patients records, with a further area identified, and funding allocated to ensure a permanent more appropriate records store.
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All consultant documentation was duplicated and placed into the patients records. This included any had written clinic notes and GPs referral letters.
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Monthly Audits were undertaken to ensure compliance.
We also saw evidence that the hospital were stopping the children’s and young person’s service for children under 16, from October 2017 with current lists continuing until January 2017.
We will continue to monitor the performance of this service and inspect it again, as part of our on-going programme.
Amanda Stanford
Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals