Hospital Visting Programme - St Richards and Worthing Hospitals

This report details the themes and issues raised from these conversations as well as our observations of the service and environment. We feel that visiting Worthing and St Richards on consecutive months was a very useful exercise, allowing us to compare insight between the two hospitals, managed by Western Sussex Hospital’s NHS Foundation Trust. This has let us highlight where the hospitals could share areas of good practice, as well as where improvements can be made.

It is shared with the Trust, which in this case is Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, regulators, the local authority, and NHS commissioners and quality assurers, the public, Healthwatch England and any other relevant partners based on what was found during the visit.

Summary of findings

• Patients at both hospitals, spoke highly of individual staff members and teams who demonstrated high standards of care. However, we did hear some negative stories from patients who had not had great experiences.

• There were some examples of good practice and positive patient engagement and care – particularly in the Endoscopy Unit at Worthing and the Neo-natal Unit at St Richards.

• The main reception areas at both sites were open, clean and airy. But we were disappointed to see the lowered desk sections, for wheelchair users, was not easily accessible. In fact, at Worthing there was a board blocking this section.

• We also felt there were examples of inconsistencies between the hospitals. Whilst we appreciate the geography and demographics are quite different, we would expect to see consistency in service delivery and policies. We were surprised the Discharge Lounges seem to operate very different processes at each site and this was clearly a problem for patients and staff at St Richards.

• We feel there was an issue with the housekeeping and cleaning standards at Worthing and that this needs to be addressed as a priority.

• Signage has clearly been reviewed and updated in most areas, but there still seems to be issues with some departments and areas being forgotten or added on, as an after-thought.