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Liverpool Women's Hospital

Provider Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust Type NHS Healthcare Organisation Region North West Last inspected 15 Aug 2025

Overall rating: Good  View full CQC report

Domain ratings

Five CQC key questions
Safe
Good
Effective
Good
Caring
Good
Responsive
Good
Well-led
Good

Current CQC assessment

Single Assessment Framework

From 2024 CQC rates services through ongoing assessments rather than comprehensive inspections.

Good Assessed 15 August 2025
The service is performing well and meeting our expectations.
Liverpool Women’s Hospital is part of the Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust and specialises in the health of women, babies, and their families. It is one of only two specialist trusts in the UK and the largest women’s hospital in Europe. As a tertiary centre the hospital provides care for a significant proportion of people with high levels of complexity and clinical risk, as well as serving a local population with significant deprivation. The hospital teams deliver around 8,000 babies each year. The maternity team cares for women and their babies …

Ratings by service

Maternity
Good
Mar 2025

Regulatory breaches & enforcement

Current-framework "must do" equivalent

Breaches of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, stated verbatim in the CQC assessment.

Warning notice Overall
Following the inspection, we issued a warning notice requiring the trust to make significant improvements.
· 15 Aug 2025 · CQC source
Warning notice Overall
We also carried out a focused inspection to follow up the warning notice during January 2024.
· 15 Aug 2025 · CQC source
Warning notice Safe
We found the service complied with the requirements of the warning notice issued in February 2023 but identified additional regulatory breaches relating to safe care and treatment (Regulation 12), good governance (Regulation 17) and staffing (Regulation 18).
Regulation: Regulation 12 (Safe care and treatment) · 15 Aug 2025 · CQC source

Earlier inspection findings

pre-2024 framework · 3 must-do 4 should-do

Must-do actions (3)

Legal requirements based on regulation breaches identified during inspection.

Must-do action 1 of 3
Must do
Safe
The trust must ensure that staff complete and record full sets of observations in the intrapartum period and effectively monitor for deterioration.
Regulation: Regulation 12(2)(a)
⚠ We reviewed 5 MEOWS records and found that not all records were fully completed or completed at the correct frequency. We saw that 1 set of observations had not been completed until 2.5 hours after the woman’s admission to the Midwifery Led Unit (MLU). An audit of MEOWS completed by …
Must-do action 2 of 3
Must do
Well-led
The trust must ensure that clinical decision making in relation to the frequency of observations is recorded.
Regulation: Regulation 17(2)(c)
⚠ An audit of MEOWS completed by the trust in October 2023 showed that the required frequency of observations was only recorded in 12.5% of records. We did not see that any actions had been identified to improve this and this remained an issue when we carried out our inspection. We …
Must-do action 3 of 3
Must do
Safe
The trust must ensure that there is sufficient shift leadership on matbase to keep women, babies and staff safe.
Regulation: Regulation 18(1)
⚠ Staff told us that the shift lead on matbase was not always supernumerary. During our inspection, despite the shift leader being supernumerary, we did observe that the role was very demanding due to the size of the unit. Leaders told us that this was under review. We spoke with leaders …

Should-do actions (4)

Recommended improvements to enhance service quality.

Should-do action 1 of 4
Should do
Well-led
The trust should ensure that systems and processes are in place to accurately collect data to assess and monitor performance in relation to time to medical review and 1:1 care in labour.
Should-do action 2 of 4
Should do
Well-led
The trust should ensure that all departments are represented at twice daily safety briefs to effectively identify, escalate and mitigate risks.
Should-do action 3 of 4
Should do
Safe
The trust should ensure that staff respond appropriately to activated baby alarms.
Should-do action 4 of 4
Should do
Safe
The trust should consider reviewing the systems and processes used for checks of emergency equipment.

Location details

CQC ID: REP01
Local authority: Liverpool
Region: North West

Inspection report

Type: Location
Date: 28 February 2024
Rating: Inspected but not rated
Actions: 3 must-do 4 should-do
AI-extracted 3 Jun 2026

Related PFD reports

2013-0281 — Isabella Hope Hill (Oct 2013)