Royal Derby Hospital

Derby Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust provides both acute hospital and community-based health services. There are two inpatient hospitals, the Royal Derby Hospital and London Road Community Hospital. The trust serves a population of over 600,000 people living in Derby and the surrounding areas. In total the trust has 1,100 beds.

Derby is an urban area with a deprivation score of 63 out of 326 local authorities (with one being the most deprived). This means that Derby Unitary Authority has a significantly deprived population and is worse than the national average on a range of population health measures.

Life expectancy for men is lower than the England average and is 12.2 years lower between the most deprived and the least deprived areas of Derby. For women the difference is nine years lower. Reducing inequalities in health is one of the local priorities across the Derby health community.

We inspected Derby Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust as part of our comprehensive inspection programme.

We carried out an announced inspection of the Royal Derby Hospital, London Road Community Hospital as well as the community-based services between 8 and 11 December 2014. In addition, an unannounced inspection was carried out between 5pm and midnight on 22 December 2014. The purpose of the unannounced inspection was to look at the accident and emergency (A&E) department, critical care and a number of wards in both the Royal Derby Hospital and London Road Community Hospital.

We made judgements about all of the services the trust provided and because just three out of the eleven core services we inspected required improvement we rated this trust as “good” overall and noted some outstanding practice and innovation. However, improvements were needed to ensure that services were safe, effective and well led.