Members of the public and former patients have highly commended Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (HHFT) for the quality of its food and cleanliness.
Staff are celebrating after the latest Patient-Led Assessments of the Care Environment (PLACE) results awarded the Trust 97.96% overall for its cleanliness, scoring above the national average. Andover War Memorial Hospital in particular scored full marks (100%) for its cleanliness, coming out top overall in the region. PLACE assessors also awarded the Trust 87.45% for the quality of its food, a significant 10% increase from 2014’s results.
One patient assessor said: “This was an exciting opportunity to see how it looks from the patient’s perspective. It was heart-warming to hear one gentleman call out to me ‘You won’t find any dust under there’ as I knelt down to check under a bed. He was not alone in his praise for the standards on the wards.”
Mary Edwards, Chief Executive, said: “We are constantly working to improve our standards and we value this feedback from these assessors who are members of the public . We take great pride in the cleanliness of our hospitals and we have done a lot of work on improving the food being served to patients, so we’re especially delighted to be scoring highly on these measures.”
“The clinical environment is important to our patients’ recovery, and whilst we are all extremely pleased to be performing so well, we are not complacent and will be looking to improve even further in a number of areas to provide the best possible care environment.”
PLACE was introduced in 2013 with the key purpose of ensuring patients are at the centre of all inspections of hospital environments.
Patient Assessors were recruited from Winchester Healthwatch, Patient Voice Forum, Trust Governors, Cancer Support Group and the Health Information Point to score all HHFT wards against a series of standards. The assessments took place in the spring and action plans to address any issues raised were put into place straight away.
Full results of the inspection are published today and can be viewed here: www.hscic.gov.uk/catalogue/PUB18042
Wonderful news, well done to the cleaning staff