4 October 2022

Royal Papworth Hospital has been named as one of the top NHS Trusts in the country for inpatient care, according to the Care Quality Commission Adult Inpatient Survey 2021.

The survey looks at the experiences of people who stayed at least one night in hospital. It asked patients for their views on all aspects of their care, such as: the hospital environment; communication with staff; involvement in decisions; and being treated with dignity and respect. 

Royal Papworth was one of nine hospitals to have achieved the highest band of ‘much better than expected results’, which is based on the proportion of patients who responded positively compared to the average. 

It is the third year-in-a-row that the hospital has been named in the top category. 

On average, patients rated the overall experience as 9.2 out of 10. 

The Trust scored particularly highly for privacy (9.9), cleanliness (9.8), getting enough to drink (9.7), having confidence in the doctors (9.7) and nurses (9.6), and being given enough information about their condition or treatment (9.5).

Eilish Midlane, Chief Executive at Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We are delighted to once again see these excellent results in the CQC Adult Inpatient Survey. 

“Maintaining these high levels since 2019 is testament to the outstanding care our staff provide every single day, working tirelessly and collaboratively to provide the very best experiences for our patients.

“Thank you to every patient who took the time to fill out the survey, helping us to know what we are doing well and pinpoint areas that need more focus. Every piece of feedback is valuable to allow us to continuously improve our services for the benefit of our patients.” 

The report summarises the experiences of more than 62,000 patients who used NHS adult inpatient services during November 2021. 

At Royal Papworth, 1,250 patients were invited to take part with 770 completing the survey at a 63% response rate. This is a lower response rate than 2021 which was 68%, but much higher than the national average of 39%. 

Trusts were then listed in one of seven categories based on the proportion of patients who responded positively compared to the average; ‘much better than expected’, ‘better than expected’, ‘somewhat better than expected’, ‘about the same’, ‘somewhat worse than expected’, ‘worse than expected’ or ‘much worse than expected’.