Spire Methley Park Hospital is operated by Spire Healthcare Limited. The hospital has 24 inpatient beds including three operating theatres, outpatient department, diagnostic and imaging facilities. At the time of inspection, the hospital was undergoing building work and the number of beds had temporarily been reduced to 16.

The hospital provides surgery and outpatients and diagnostic imaging. We inspected surgery, outpatient department, diagnostic and imaging facilities. The hospital had stopped providing services for children and young people (below the age of 18) prior to our inspection to enable a full review of services in line with latest national guidelines.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out the announced part of the inspection on 1 and 2 November 2016, along with an unannounced visit to the hospital on 17 November 2016.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we ask the same five questions of all services: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs, and well-led? Where we have a legal duty to do so we rate services’ performance against each key question as outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate.

Throughout the inspection, we took account of what people told us and how the provider understood and complied with the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

The main service provided by this hospital was surgery. Where our findings on surgery – for example, management arrangements – also apply to other services, we do not repeat the information but cross-refer to the surgery core service. See surgery section for main findings.

We rated this hospital as good overall.

We found good practice in relation to surgery, diagnostics and outpatient care:

• There were sufficient qualified, skilled and experienced staff to meet people’s needs. The service managed staffing effectively. Staff teams and services worked together effectively to deliver good care.

• The hospital had good systems and processes in place to protect people from abuse and avoidable harm. There were systems in place for incident reporting, staff knew how to use them and learning was shared to prevent recurrence.

• We found patient care, treatment and support achieved good outcomes and helped patients to maintain their quality of life, based on the best available evidence. There were clear pathways of care and staff were able to recognise and respond to warning signs of deteriorating health.

• All staff showed a caring approach to their patients. We saw patients treated with dignity and respect and feedback from patients was positive.

• The provider met national indicators for referral to treatment (RTT) waiting times. The service took account of the different individual needs of people using the service, including those living with dementia and learning disabilities.

• Staff had worked closely with the local Healthwatch; they had done environment checks and assessed the hospital for dementia and learning disability friendliness. They had worked closely together to design a dementia friendly room as part of the new building work.

• Leaders were visible, promoted an open and fair culture. Staff felt listened to and said the hospital was a good place to work. There was a clear vision and strategy and effective governance systems in place to ensure that quality, performance and risks were managed.

There were no breaches of regulations. However, there were areas where the provider should make some improvements, even though a regulation had not been breached, to help the service improve. These were:

• The provider should implement plans to ensure there is appropriate pharmacy provision at the hospital.

• The provider should continue to review and revise the risk register to reflect the specific risks for Spire Methley Park Hospital.

• The provider should consider installing clinical hand wash basins and hard flooring in patient bedrooms as part of the refurbishment programme.

• The provider should continue to raise staff awareness regarding safeguarding including domestic abuse.

•  The provider should review the audit programme within the outpatient department.

Ellen Armistead

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals