Southend University Hospital

We undertook this inspection 12-14 January and returned unannounced 24 January 2016. The main part of the inspection was a comprehensive announced inspection. We inspected Southend Hospital and the outpatient’s service for children and young people at the Lighthouse Child Development Unit. This service was not triggering as high risk from national data sets or as an outlier. Southend University Hospital NHS FT is part of the Success Regime. This includes Southend, Basildon and Mid Essex trusts working together to influence system change across the health economy. This process is key to improved care in the NHS. During the first day of the inspection the junior doctor’s strike was in progress. The trust was ofered the option to cancel the inspection but declined. We noted that the trust had a clear plan for patient care during this period of industrial action. During our inspection the trust was on a high state of escalation due to the increased number of patients coming in to the hospital. This had existed for some time before our inspection. We rated the services ofered by Southend University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust as ‘requires improvement’.