Patients PLACE faith in Trust’s food, drink and cleanliness

Patients PLACE faith in Trust’s food, drink and cleanliness

An army of patient assessors accompanied by hospital staff descended on The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHSTrust to carry out its PLACE (Patient-led Assessments of the Care Environment) assessment this year.

Using a standard assessment format issued by NHS England, 110 patient assessors, 99 staff assessors and eight external assessors inspected every nook and cranny at each of the Trust’s hospitals – North Manchester General Hospital, The Royal Oldham Hospital, Rochdale Infirmary, Fairfield General Hospital in Bury, Henesy House our community integrated care unit situated in Collyhurst, and the specialist Floyd Unit at Birch Hill Hospital.

The PLACE assessments were carried out between March and June 2014 with the aim of providing a snapshot of how the Trust is performing against a range of non-clinical activities that impact on the patient experience of care. These are:

• Cleanliness 
• The condition, appearance and maintenance of healthcare premises 
• The extent to which the environment supports the delivery of care with privacy, dignity and wellbeing 
• Dementia friendly 
• Staff appearance 
• Hand hygiene 
• The quality and availability of food and drink

Pam Miller, associate director of facilities at The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust said: “Overall the Trust has excelled and produced scores better than the national average for food and drink and cleanliness. All of the patient assessors were very complimentary of the Trust and said they had learnt a great deal by taking part in the PLACE inspections. They said they were very proud of our newly refurbished wards and departments on all our sites.”

An action plan has been drawn up for each hospital site to further improve the scores in future assessments, and to take into account any recommendations put forward by the patient assessors who visited the Trust’s hospital sites.

The 2014 PLACE report and summary action plan have been put on the public pages of the Trust’s website at www.pat.nhs.uk as a requirement of NHS England.