Eastbourne District General Hospital

The Trust serves a population of 525,000 people across East Sussex. It provides a total of 833 beds with 661 beds provided in general and acute services at the two district general hospital and community hospitals. In addition there are 45 Maternity beds at Conquest Hospital, and the midwifery led unit at Eastbourne District General Hospital and 19 Critical care beds (11 at Conquest Hospital, 8 at Eastbourne District General Hospital).

At the time of the inspection there was a new Trust Board which included a Chairman, five Non-executive directors, Chief Executive and Executive directors. The Chair was appointed in January 2016 for a period of four years. The Chief Executive Officer joined the Trust in April 2016. The Non executive directors have varying lengths of service with the trust with some appointed quite recently and others being more established. Other new appointments since our last inspection include the Chief Operating Officer, the Medical Director and the Finance Director who all started work during 2016. Some stability and continuity were provided by the Human Resources Director, Director of Nursing and Director of Corporate Affairs who had all been in post prior to the previous inspections and were overseeing the implementation of the action plan.

The trust’s main Clinical Commissioning Group’s (CCG) are Eastbourne, Hailsham and Seaford Commissioning Group, Hastings and Rother Clinical Commissioning Group and High Weald, Lewes and Havens Clinical Commissioning Group.

We carried out this focussed inspection in October 2016. We held a series of focus groups with staff from across the trust in the week preceding the inspection. Teams, which included CQC inspectors and clinical experts, visited the two acute hospitals.  We spoke with staff of all grades, individually and in groups, who worked in acute and community settings. We also carried out an unannounced inspection visits after the announced visit.