Southlands Hospital

Updated 22 October 2019

The trust serves a population of around 450,00 across a catchment area covering most of West Sussex. The three hospitals are situated in the local authorities of Worthing, Chichester and Adur. These areas have a higher proportion of over 65's (between 21.8% and 25.8%) compared to the England average (17.3%).

The three local authorities have a lower proportion of ethnic minority populations compared to the England average with 93.7% and 96.7% of the population being white, compared to an England average of 85.3%.

Deprivation:

Adur and Worthing fall within the third quintile on the index of multiple deprivation, signifying that they are in the middle 20% in England for deprivation. Chichester lies in the second quintile, meaning it is in the top 40% of least deprived areas in the country. The excess winter deaths in the Adur district is amongst England’s worst performing districts.

Updated 22 October 2019

Our rating of services stayed the same. We rated them as good.

Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust became a foundation trust on 1 July 2013. Southlands Hospital in Shoreham, West Sussex is one of three hospitals provided by the trust.

On the Shoreham site only day surgery and outpatient services are provided. There are no inpatient beds. At this inspection we inspected the responsive key question of the outpatients service across the trust.

Updated 22 October 2019

We only inspected the responsive domain in Outpatients. We rated outpatients as good.

Updated 20 April 2016

Overall we found that surgical services at Southland’s Hospital were 'Good'. This was because;

Patients were protected from avoidable harm as systems were in place to report, monitor, investigate and take action on any incident that occurred. There were effective governance arrangements to facilitate monitoring, evaluation and reporting and learning. Risks were identified and acknowledged and action plans were put into place to address them.

We saw patients’ care needs were assessed, planned and delivered in a way that protected their rights and maintained their safety. Surgical care was evidenced based and adhered to national and best practice guidance. The trust’s policies and guidance were readily available to staff through the trust’s intranet. The care delivered was routinely measured to ensure quality and adherence to national guidance and to improve quality and patient outcomes. The trust was able to demonstrate that it continuously met the majority of national quality indicators. Patient surgical outcomes were monitored and reviewed through formal national and local audits.

There was clear local leadership, and staff knew their reporting responsibilities and took ownership of their areas of influence. All staff spoke with passion and pride about working at Southland’s Hospital and spoke enthusiastically about their role and responsibilities. Staff attendance at mandatory training was good and staff were knowledgeable in how to safeguard and protect vulnerable patients.

Information from patients confirmed they were treated with dignity and respect and had their care needs met by caring and compassionate staff. During our inspection we observed patients being treated with kindness, respect, professionalism and courtesy. This positive feedback was reflected in the general Family and Friends feedback and patient survey results for the trust.

However, we found some areas that had scope for improvement. We considered that existing mitigating strategies and the expertise of clinical staff meant that risks to patients were minimised:

The trust did not meet the referral to treatment (RTT) times for a number of surgical specialties. The ophthalmology and urology specialties were of particular concern at the current time.

We found that surgical activity at Southland’s Hospital was often included with that of Worthing Hospital making it difficult to gain a true understanding of the levels of surgical activity, incident or complaints at the hospital.

Southlands Hospital was isolated geographically and organisationally, with staff needing to actively engage with the two main hospitals to stay informed and involved rather than being an integral part of their core business.