08/03/2023
During an inspection looking at part of the service
The first 2 pages of this report pertain to the hospital location, from page 3 the report focuses on the maternity service.
We inspected the maternity service at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital (QCCH) as part of our national maternity inspection programme. The programme aims to give an up-to-date view of hospital maternity care across the country and help us understand what is working well to support learning and improvement at a local and national level.
We will publish a report of our overall findings when we have completed the national inspection programme.
We carried out a short notice announced focused inspection of the maternity service, looking only at the safe and well-led key question.
As a result of this inspection Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital location overall rating has remained Outstanding.
Our rating of maternity remained Outstanding overall.
Maternity services at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital include on site and community antenatal clinics, maternity department assessment unit, delivery suites with birthing pool, transitional care, tertiary obstetric medicine (de Swiet Obstetric medicine unit), and a private maternity ward. The hospital is the maternal Medicine Centre for North West London.
The birth centre has seven birthing rooms, three of which have birth pools and ensuite facilities. From 1 April 2022 to 28 February 2023 there were 4,832 deliveries at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital.
The trust has two neonatal units which support the maternity services at both sites. QCCH has a level 3 neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) providing special care (SC), high dependency (HD) care, and intensive care (IC) for a range of circumstances. The QCCH NICU has 16 IC / HD cots and 8 SC cots.
How we carried out the inspection
We carried out an on-site inspection where we observed the environment, observed care, conducted interviews with patients and staff, reviewed policies, care records, medicines charts and documentation. Following the site visit, we conducted interviews with senior leaders and reviewed feedback from women and families about the trust.
You can find further information about how we carry out our inspections on our website: https://www.cqc.org.uk/what-we-do/how-we-do-our-job/what-we-do-inspection.