Royal Surrey County Hospital and Maternity Services Rated as Outstanding

Published on: 21 Feb, 2024
Updated on: 24 Feb, 2024

The Royal Surrey County Hospital

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated The Royal Surrey County Hospital and its maternity services as “outstanding”.

The recognition follows a re-inspection of their maternity services in September and the publication of the official report, which retains the rating of outstanding for both the maternity service and hospital site.

Louise Stead

Chief executive Louise Stead said: “These are two exceptional achievements. The regime for maternity inspections is very detailed and to retain the rating of outstanding is testament to the dedication and passion of our maternity colleagues.

“I would like to thank the whole team for their professionalism and the high level of care they give to women and those using our services every single day.

“To then achieve an overall rating of outstanding for Royal Surrey County Hospital is, without doubt, the cherry on the cake. This is the culmination of years of hard work from right across the organisation.

“No individual team, service or hospital site works in isolation and it is only when we come together and support each other that an achievement of this magnitude is possible. I am incredibly proud of all our staff.”

Joss Bigmore

Joss Bigmore chair of the Royal Surrey Foundation Trust added: “It is coming up to a year since I joined Royal Surrey and it was clear from the start that this is a special place to work. Our priority is to provide the best possible care and treatment to patients and receiving these ratings from the CQC affirms that. It is well-deserved recognition for every outstanding member of our Royal Surrey family.

“Louise and I would like to thank them all and also all of the organisations, partners and members of the local community who work closely with us and support us in delivering this high level of care every single day.”

Throughout a very thorough inspection the team visited every area of the department, including the planned assessment unit, triage, theatre, recovery, enhanced care, delivery suite, birth centre, antenatal clinic and the wards.

The inspectors spoke with 36 team members, six senior leaders and five users of our services and also reviewed a wealth of documentation, including patient records and guidelines.

The report summary showed 12 positive highlights – including that the maternity team have the right number of staff who are clear about their roles, properly trained, working well together for the benefit of women and birthing people.

“They found that staff assess risks to women properly, act on them and keep good care records; and that the management of safety incidents and learning from them is good.”

The CQC have recognised that the overall rating for Royal Surrey County Hospital should have been outstanding from their June 2020 inspections. This is when they came to inspect other services and found that medical care (including older people’s care) and end-of-life care were also outstanding.

The commission has clarified that the omission was due to an internal error in their calculation of the rating and it has now been amended on the website and official posters.

The rating of outstanding only applies to Royal Surrey County Hospital. The overall trust rating remains as “good” as different metrics are used to measure the overall performance of a trust and the community hospital sites (Milford, Haslemere and Cranleigh) have not yet been inspected by the CQC.