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The Princess Alexandra Hospital

Provider The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust Type NHS Healthcare Organisation Region East Last inspected 30 Jul 2026

Location rating: Requires Improvement  View location on CQC

Location ratings by domain

Five CQC key questions

Ratings held for this CQC location under the Single Assessment Framework, assessed 30 July 2026. Ratings extracted from individual reports are shown separately below.

Safe
Requires Improvement
Effective
Good
Caring
Good
Responsive
Requires Improvement
Well-led
Requires Improvement

CQC assessments indexed

Single Assessment Framework

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

Requires Improvement
The service is not performing as well as it should and we have told the service how it must improve.
The Princess Alexandra Hospital provides a range of NHS hospital services.Date of assessment: 11 and 12 November 2025. We carried out an assessment of urgent and emergency care and surgery.Date of assessment: 26 and 27 November 2025. We carried out an assessment of medical care (including older people).The rating of urgent and emergency care, surgery and medical care (including older people) have been combined with the ratings of the other services from the last inspections. See our previous reports to get a full picture of all the other services at …

Ratings by service

Medical care (Including older people's care)
Good
Jul 2026
Surgery
Requires Improvement
Sep 2025
Urgent and emergency services
Requires Improvement
Sep 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.

Breaches identified (3)

Breach Overall
During our assessment, we found concerns which resulted in a breach of regulation.
· 30 Jul 2026
Breach Safe
They were in breach of the legal regulations in relation to staffing, and safe care and treatment.
Regulation: Regulation 12 (Safe care and treatment) · 30 Jul 2026
Breach Caring
We found breaches in safe care and treatment, dignity and respect and good governance.
Regulation: Regulation 10 (Dignity and respect) · 30 Jul 2026

Most recent report indexed for actions

The date and rating here are from an individual report, not necessarily the location's latest assessment. Report ratings are extracted with AI; verify the original PDF.

Type: Location
Date: 16 June 2023
Rating extracted from this report: Requires Improvement
Actions indexed: 3 must-do 3 should-do

Read this inspection PDF

AI-extracted 3 Jun 2026

Earlier inspection findings

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

Must-do actions (3)

Legal requirements based on regulation breaches identified during inspection.

Must-do action 1 of 3
Must do
Well-led
The trust must ensure there are effective escalation procedures in place in the event of staff shortages.
Regulation: Regulation 17
⚠ The service had processes in place to assess and escalate staffing concerns, however, these processes were not always effective. The inspection team had to escalate concerns around lack of staff triaging patients twice, and a staff member's escalation for support in resus with 4 patients was not acted upon by …
Must-do action 2 of 3
Must do
Safe
The trust must ensure full risk assessment and care plans are completed in line with policy for patients assessed to be at risk during triage.
Regulation: Regulation 12(2)(a)
⚠ Staff did not always update risk assessments for each patient, and full risk assessments and care plans were not completed in a timely manner in line with trust policy for patients assessed to be at risk during triage, including for bed rails, pressure ulcers, and mental health risks.
Must-do action 3 of 3
Must do
Safe
The trust must ensure that patients receive ongoing observations in line with policy.
Regulation: Regulation 12(2)(a)
⚠ Follow up observations were not completed in a timely way in line with policy. For example, 12 electronic patient records showed no regular observations, and four patients with a NEWS2 greater than 3 had gaps of between 1.5 and 3 hours. In children's ED, 3 patients were overdue hourly observations.

Should-do actions (3)

Recommended improvements to enhance service quality.

Should-do action 1 of 3
Should do
Well-led
The trust should consider streaming patients effectively to reduce the demand on the service.
Regulation: Regulation 17
Should-do action 2 of 3
Should do
Safe
The trust should ensure their medical staffing meets the demand of patients overnight to avoid lengthy delays.
Regulation: Regulation 18
Should-do action 3 of 3
Should do
Safe
The trust should ensure call bells are within easy reach for patients.
Regulation: Regulation 12(2)(e)