Royal Blackburn Hospital

Royal Blackburn Hospital is part of East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust. The trust was established in 2003 and is a major acute trust located in Lancashire. Royal Blackburn Hospital has 693 beds.

In 2013 the trust overall was identified nationally as having high mortality rates and it was one of 14 hospital trusts to be investigated by Sir Bruce Keogh (the medical director for NHS England) as part of the Keogh Mortality Review in July 2013. After that review, the trust entered special measures. We inspected this trust as part of our comprehensive inspection programme in April 2014 following which they exited special measures.

The trust is not a foundation trust. The Royal Blackburn Hospital provides services to the people in the local authority areas of Blackburn and Darwen which is a unitary authority in Lancashire in the heart of North West England. Census data shows that Blackburn with Darwen has an increasing population and a higher than England average proportion of Black, Asian and minority ethnic residents. Life expectancy is 3.1 years lower for men and 4.5 years lower for women in the most deprived areas than in the least-deprived areas of Blackburn with Darwen.

We inspected this trust as part of a follow up inspection to assess if the trust had continued to improve since our last inspection.