Cirencester NHS Treatment Centre scores with patient assessors

Company news

Oct 01, 2013

Cirencester NHS Treatment Centre, run by Care UK, has been given the seal of approval following an inspection by a new body that puts patients at the heart of the assessment.

The recently published report praises the centre, which offers day surgery and out-patient services to patients across the region, for its high levels of care and cleanliness.

In January 2012, Prime Minister David Cameron called for a new patient-led inspection of hospitals’ environments and in May the treatment centre underwent its first Patient Led Assessment of Care Environment (PLACE). As the team is led by patients, the assessment places patients’ views at the centre of the review.

A patient assessor – a specially trained patient from the local area who can undertake the assessment from the patients’ perspective – led the inspection at the Cirencester centre, along with a member of the organisation Healthwatch.

Mona Vanwyk, the treatment centre’s head of nursing, said: “The assessors have access to all the areas a patient would visit. We took them to the wards, to our pre-admission and recovery unit, out-patients and all other public areas of the centre. They also spoke to patients about the care they receive and their opinions on hygiene standards.”

The scores awarded to the centre by the assessors were:

• Cleanliness : 100 percent
• Food : 80 percent
• Privacy, Dignity and Wellbeing : 95.5 percent
• Condition, Appearance and Maintenance : 96.2 percent

Tony Cox, a patient forum member at Emerson Green NHS Treatment Centre and PLACE assessor for Cirencester, said: “The management and staff have been very open, helpful and friendly and, coming from an engineering background, I was pleased to see everyone was willing to listen to a different viewpoint.

“The Cirencester NHS Treatment Centre was clean and well run and the management and staff work hard to maintain the high standard. I thought that when our teams offered suggestions for improvement the management did their utmost to incorporate the changes.

“I think it is important that patients have a very real input into the hospital that serves their community and I felt that the team members that worked with us on the assessment valued our comments. It was also clear that the patients are treated with privacy, dignity and respect and in a very professional way.”

Helen Rossiter, hospital director at Cirencester NHS Treatment Centre, said: “Patient feedback is a key component in consistently delivering first class care. Patient assessors can bring a unique viewpoint to an inspection because of their experience as patients and from their professional lives, and I know my team and I greatly value their thoughts. I can certainly say that we welcomed our first PLACE assessment and will take on the assessors’ suggestions.

“It was also very rewarding to hear that the hard work our teams put into delivering first class care on a daily basis is meeting patients’ expectations and that the hard work of our cleaning and maintenance teams is clearly visible to visitors.”