Whiston Hospital

On this page

• Overview
• Person-centred Care
• Care provision, Integration and continuity
• Providing Information
• Listening to and involving people
• Equity in access
• Equity in experiences and outcomes
• Planning for the future

Staff were aware of how they could make reasonable adjustments for patients. Leaders and staff were alert to discrimination and inequality that could disadvantage certain groups of people. The service learned and made improvements on feedback from complaints.

However, patients had long waits for specialty reviews.

This service scored 54 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

We did not look at Person-centred Care during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Responsive.

We did not look at Care provision, Integration and continuity during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Responsive.

We did not look at Providing Information during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Responsive.

Patients told us that they would feel comfortable raising concerns, knew how to, and felt that they would be listened to.

Leaders told us that the department had a low number of complaints at the time of our assessment, and these had decreased.

The matron was able to articulate the main and most common themes of complaints the department received and what work had been done to action these.

Leaders told us, and provided data that demonstrated, all incidents requiring duty of candour responses received these in a timely manner.

The trust gathered feedback from service users and had a process for monitoring complaints and concerns, to identify themes and trends.

Staff were informed of patient complaints and how they could learn from these.

The trust had a complaints policy which was within date and was in line with NHS complaints guidelines.

People’s experience showed that many patients had complained of long waits to be seen by doctors or admitted to a ward once a decision to admit had been made. Some Healthwatch reviews referred to patients being cared for on the A&E corridor for long periods of time waiting for ward beds, with some saying they had spent up to 2 days on the corridor.

Patients told us they had been waiting long periods of time for specialty reviews and beds.

Leaders and staff told us that they had concerns about delays of in some cases over 24 hours for specialty reviews, particularly for medicine and surgery. We asked the trust for data for the wait times of referral to review, but the Trust did not monitor this and did not have internally agreed standards for this.

However, staff told us that there was a lot of support and resources for people with disabilities and communication needs.

The hospital did not have processes in place to monitor inter-specialty reviews and referrals to identify delays in patients being reviewed following referral to specialisms such as medicine and surgery. Leaders told us they were aware of the issue of delays for specialty review, however without monitoring timeliness of reviews it would be uncertain if and when changes had made a difference.

The percentage of patients seen within 4 hours between October 2023 and March 2024 was significantly lower than the national standard and worse than the national average.

The Trust submitted their data for waiting times from decision to admit to admission. This showed that for October 2023 to March 2024 the average was 3.1% of patients waited 4-12 hours to be admitted and 0.18% waited over 12 hours. This however, is not reflective of what we saw on the day of our inspection with patients waiting over 90 hours for mental health beds in other trusts and over 25 hours for general medicine beds.

We did not look at Equity in experiences and outcomes during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Responsive.

We did not look at Planning for the future during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Responsive.