Arthur Rank Hospice

Updated 11 February 2019

Arthur Rank Hospice is operated by Arthur Rank Hospice Charity . The original Arthur Rank Hospice on Mill Road, Cambridge opened in 1982. The service opened a new purpose-built hospice in 2016. The hospice primarily serves the communities of the Cambridgeshire area.

The new hospice has 23 beds, 12 of which are specialist palliative care beds which are commissioned by the CCG.  In December 2017 the service opened additional beds in collaboration with a local NHS Trust l (which is 1.7 miles away).  The service operates 9 beds in partnership with the local hospital, these are for patients who have been assessed as having two weeks to live and who would be likely to die on a hospital ward.

The hospice also provides a specialist palliative care community nursing team advice line, from 9am to 5pm seven days a week. Out of hours, advice could be sought by telephone through the inpatient unit. A hospice at home service, day therapy service and outpatient clinics for lymphoedema patients was also available.

The service offers psychological support, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and bereavement support to patients and their relatives.

At the time of our inspection, a new registered manager had recently been appointed and was registered with the CQC in November 2018. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the CQC to manage the service. They have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated regulations about how the service is run.

Arthur Rank Hospice had not been inspected before. We inspected the service on 5 December 2018, our inspection was announced at short notice, to ensure that everyone we needed to speak with was available. We then carried out a follow-up unannounced inspection on 18 December 2018.

Updated 11 February 2019

The Arthur Rank hospice is operated by the Arthur Rank Hospice Charity. The hospice runs a number of services including 23 inpatient beds and a hospice at home night service from 10pm to 7am seven days a week, a specialist palliative community nursing team that conducts assessments and provides patients with advice in their own homes. The service also runs day hospice centres from the Arthur Rank Hospice site and a separate site in Wisbech and specialist palliative care outpatient clinics including a lymphoedema clinic and complex pain management clinic.

The hospice provides care and treatment for patients with a life-limiting condition who are aged 18 years or over.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out the short-announced part of the inspection on 5 December 2018. An unannounced follow-up inspection took place on 18 December 2018.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we ask the same five questions of all services: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs, and well-led? Where we have a legal duty to do so we rate services’ performance against each key question as outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate.

Throughout our inspection, we took account of what people told us and how the provider understood and complied with the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

Services we rate

We rated this service as Outstanding overall.

• Staff kept patients safe from harm and abuse. Risks were assessed, monitored and managed appropriately.

• Staff followed best practice in relation to infection prevention and control.

• Care and treatment records were accurate, stored securely and provided comprehensive details of care and treatment.

• Staff recognised incidents and knew how to report them. Managers investigated incidents and made improvements to the service.

• Staff had the appropriate skills, training, knowledge and experience to deliver effective care and treatment.

• Staff delivered care and treatment in line with evidence-based practice.

• Staff involved patients and carers in decisions about their care and treatment.

• Staff cared for patients with compassion, treating them with dignity and respect. Staff truly respected and valued patients as individuals and empowered them as partners in their care, practically and emotionally, by offering an exceptional service.

• The service was proactive in meeting the needs of people from their whole community. The services provided reflected the needs of the population served and ensured flexibility, choice and continuity of care.

• The service was proactive at engaging with groups that were hard to reach to ensure equitable access to its services.

• There were clear processes for staff to manage complaints and concerns.

• There was an open and transparent culture, with engaged and experienced leadership.

However, we also found the following issues that the service provider needs to improve:

• The maintenance and of equipment did not always keep people safe. We found out of date consumable equipment and one piece of electrical equipment that had not received a service within the hospice’s agreed timescales.

• Not all outcome measures collected by the service were reported on during governance meetings meaning that outcome measures did not always shape and improve services.

Amanda Stanford

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals (Central)

Updated 11 February 2019

Hospices for adults was the only activity provided at this location.