Royal Trinity Hospice

Updated 27 August 2019

Royal Trinity Hospice is operated by Royal Trinity Hospice, and is located in Clapham, south London. The hospice serves the communities of the London Borough of Wandsworth which makes up approximately 50% of the patient population with the remaining 50% of patients coming from other surrounding London boroughs including Lambeth, Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster, Richmond and Merton.

The service supports people in their own homes, through an outpatient service and at an inpatient centre in Clapham, south London.

The hospice runs several services including a 28 inpatient bedded unit and a specialist palliative community nursing team who carry out assessments and provide patients with advice in their own homes, in care homes and the outpatient facilities. The service delivers a dementia service which includes a respite service as part of their inpatient offer. The service runs day hospice services from the Royal Trinity Hospice site. The hospice provided patient and family services which include bereavement support, welfare advice and a range of support service including bereavement support groups for children aged 8-12 years old.

The hospice has had a registered manager in post since May 2014. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are 'registered persons'. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

The hospice was inspected last in August 2014 and was rated the service as good over all with outstanding for caring. We inspected the service on 15 and 16 May 2019, our inspection was unannounced.

Updated 27 August 2019

Royal Trinity Hospice is operated by Royal Trinity Hospice. The service has 28 beds and provides care to patients in their own home or care home through their community teams. The service also provides dementia respite care in the inpatient unit. Facilities include an open art studio, community café, a large garden, patient and family services including bereavement support and welfare advice and a hairdresser.

The service provides hospice care for adults. We undertook an unannounced inspection of the inpatient and community services using our comprehensive inspection methodology. The inspection took place on 15 – 16 May 2019.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we ask the same five questions of all services: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs, and well-led? Where we have a legal duty to do so we rate services’ performance against each key question as outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate.

Throughout the inspection, we took account of what people told us and how the provider understood and complied with the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

The main service provided by this hospice was palliative care and care of the dying.

Services we rate

Our rating of this service improved. We rated it as Outstanding overall.

• Staff kept patients safe from avoidable harm and abuse. Risks were assessed, monitored and managed appropriately.

• Patients care, and treatment records were clearly detailed and accurate in content. They were stored securely and managed safely.

• Staff recognised incidents and knew how to report them. Managers investigated incidents and made improvements to the service.

• Staff followed best practice in relation to infection prevention and control.

• Staff had the appropriate skills, training, knowledge and experience to deliver effective care and treatment. Care and treatment was delivered in line with evidence-based practice.

• Staff involved patients and carers in decisions about their care and treatment.

• Staff cared for patients with compassion, treating them with dignity and respect. Staff truly respected and valued patients as individuals and empowered them as partners in their care, practically and emotionally, by offering an exceptional service.

• The services provided aimed to meet the needs of people from their whole community, and the needs of the population served, which ensured flexibility, choice and continuity of care.

• The service was proactive at engaging with groups that were hard to reach to ensure they could access its services.

• There were clear processes for staff to manage complaints and concerns.

• There was an open and transparent culture, with engaged and experienced leadership.

• Leaders had the integrity, skills and abilities to run the service. They understood and managed the priorities and issues the service faced.

• Leaders were visible and approachable in the service for patients and staff.

• The service had a clear vision for what it wanted to achieve and a strategy to turn it into action, developed with all relevant stakeholders.

However, we also found the following issues that the service provider needs to improve:

• The management of the rotation of single use consumable equipment was not as good as it could be.

• Some areas of mandatory training completion did not meet the services own expected targets.

Dr Nigel Acheson

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals (London and South)

Updated 27 August 2019

Hospices for adults was the only activity provided at this location.