Updated 27 October 2023
Broomfield Hospital is operated by Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust. The hospital provides local elective and emergency services to people living in and around the districts of Chelmsford, Maldon and Braintree. Medical wards provided by Broomfield Hospital include acute monitored and renal, elderly care, acute medical assessment, general medicine, stroke, respiratory, gastroenterology and hepatology, active home unit for patients medically fit for discharge and frailty assessment day unit.
Between January 2022 and December 2022 medical care had 32,663 admissions including 16,912 emergency admissions. The specialties with the highest number of admissions during the same period were general medicine (9,323), geriatric medicine (7,873) and medical oncology (5,783)
We carried out this short notice announced focused inspection of medical care on 12 July 2023.
The service was rated as inadequate following our previous inspection, in January and February 2023. Following our last inspection, we issued a warning notice under Section 29A of the Health and Social care Act 2008 because of concerns relating to poor governance, incomplete risk assessments, incomplete patient records, equipment not being maintained, patients’ nutrition and hydration needs not being met and medication not being managed in line with the service’s medicines policy.
As this inspection was a focused follow up inspection, we only looked at the key questions of safe, effective and well led. We carried out this inspection to determine whether improvements had been made against the requirements of the warning notice we issued at our previous inspection. Although the service had made improvements against the section 29A warning notice, this inspection did not look at the requirement notices that were issued at the previous inspection. As these requirement notices remain, this meant the ratings were limited to requires improvement.
Our rating of this service improved. We rated the service from inadequate to requires improvement. During this focused inspection, not all breaches identified at the last inspection were reassessed to include all potential improvements.
We found:
- The design, maintenance and use of facilities, premises and equipment kept people safe.
- Staff completed and updated risk assessments for each patient and removed or minimised risks.
- Staff gave patients enough food and drink to meet their needs and improve their health. They used special feeding and hydration techniques when necessary.
- Staff supported patients to make informed decisions about their care and treatment. They followed national guidance to obtain consent from patients.
- Leaders operated effective governance processes, throughout the service. Staff at all levels were clear about their roles and accountabilities and had regular opportunities to meet, discuss and learn from the performance of the service.
However:
- The service needed to continue to embed processes and evidence this improvement through continued audit.