Forth Valley Royal Hospital – safe delivery of care inspection report: December 2022
Document Type
Inspection reports
NHS hospitals and services
Summary
Due to the serious concerns raised during our April 2022 inspection we returned to carry out an unannounced follow-up inspection of Forth Valley Royal Hospital on Tuesday 27 and Wednesday 28 September 2022.
The purpose of this follow-up inspection was to assess progress with the improvement actions NHS Forth Valley stated it would undertake. This follow-up inspection was carried out in line with our safe delivery of care acute hospital inspection methodology.
During our inspection, we:
- inspected the ward and hospital environment.
- observed staff practice and interactions with patients, such as during patient mealtimes.
- spoke with patients, visitors and ward staff
- accessed patients’ health records, monitoring reports, policies and procedures
Our findings
This follow-up inspection highlights the limited improvement made against the nine requirements from our April 2022 inspection. The requirements that have not been met will remain in place and are described throughout this report. In addition, there are a further 11 new requirements for improvement arising from this follow-up inspection. For clarity, the 11 new requirements have been numbered 10 to 20 to reflect the previous nine requirements.
We expect NHS Forth Valley to address the ten new requirements and the remaining unmet requirements as a matter of priority in order to meet national standards and keep patients safe.
NHS Forth Valley have advised us of the actions that they have taken to date in response to the concerns we escalated and have developed an improvement action plan for the requirements we have made.
“We observed Forth Valley Royal Hospital experiencing extreme pressures from increased patient numbers, delayed discharges and high levels of staff absence. This report highlights our concerns on the limited improvement and in some cases a deterioration in safe delivery of care since our April 2022 inspection. This resulted in us formally escalating our concerns to Scottish Government in line with our escalation process.”
Donna Maclean, Chief Inspector, Healthcare Improvement Scotland