When it comes to cleanliness, dignity, a good environment, and nutrition, Worthing and St Richard’s hospitals have been rated as the PLACE to be cared for.
The hospitals have once again been awarded great scores in the PLACE scores – Patient-Led Assessments of the Care Environment – published this week by the Health & Social Care Information Centre. The ratings were provided following local inspections teams, made up of patient representatives from Healthwatch West Sussex and members of the Trust’s Council of Governors.
The findings in full were:
| Cleanliness | Food and hydration | Privacy and dignity | Condition, appearance, maintenance | |
| St Richard’s | 100% | 94.31% | 89.24% | 98.08% |
| Worthing | 99.83% | 95.21% | 89.61% | 97.44% |
| Trust combined | 99.9% | 94.83% | 89.45% | 97.71% |
| National average | 97.25% | 88.79% | 87.73% | 91.97% |
Both St Richard’s and Worthing outperformed the national scores on every measure, often by a wide margin and included a perfect score for Cleanliness.
Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs both Worthing and St Richard’s hospitals, as well as Southlands Hospital, has invested heavily in recent years to improve the overall experience of people needing care, and those who visit them.
The improvements include:
Food and hydration
Patient menus are continually reviewed and changed following input from patients themselves and specialist dieticians. We consistently ask patients for their views and feed these back to our cleaning, nutrition and facilities teams who in turn make changes to what is provided. Visiting times are organised so that they do not coincide with mealtimes, although carers and relatives are encouraged to help out if that is what they want to do. A ‘red tray’ system is in place to identify people who need assistance at mealtimes, and volunteers are available to support people who cannot easily feed themselves.
Cleanliness
In addition to the cleaning teams visiting each area several times a day, in the last year the Trust has invested in new ‘Bioquell’ machines, which use high concentrations of hydrogen peroxide vapour to eliminate bacteria to help with the reduction of infections.
Condition, appearance, maintenance
Worthing and St Richard’s hospitals have seen major investments to ensure that the physical environment is good. A new £9m breast unit opened this year at Worthing and follows the addition of the clinical block in 2012, where elderly patients are cared for in two inpatient wards. Thousands of outpatients every month are also visiting a purpose-built facility and an extra cardiac treatment lab is also now in operation. Work is also well underway for the new emergency floor, due to open at the end of the year.
New ophthalmology facilities are also in use at St Richard’s, along with improvements to the intervention room, Endoscopy and the Outpatients Department
Privacy and dignity
The investment in new facilities has produced more modern patient areas, with more side rooms, and greater scope to avoid having to place male and female patients together. The levels of backlog maintenance required have been steadily reduced. The Trust has one of the best records in terms of providing single-sex accommodation.
Cathy Stone, Director of Nursing and Patient Safety (pictured), said: “We all know how important it is to provide top-quality clinical treatment, but it is also essential to get the fundamentals right in terms of good food, cleanliness, and making people feel comfortable, and respected.
“We’re delighted with these results, especially because the inspections were led by patients. We are particularly pleased to have received a 100% rating for cleanliness.
“We thank our teams for all of their hard work, and we are continuing to invest in new facilities, and talking to patients, visitors and staff about how we can provide the best possible environment and the best possible care.”