Home / Sources / CQC / John Radcliffe Hospital
Source · CQC inspection

John Radcliffe Hospital

Provider Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Type NHS Healthcare Organisation Region South East Last inspected 9 Sep 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 9 September 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.
Date of assessment: 19 and 20 January 2026. John Radcliffe Hospital provides a range of NHS hospital services. This assessment looked at neonatal services due to the high profile of the trust within the media; we wanted to understand patient pathways from maternity services through to neonatal care. CQC inspected maternity services in the autumn of 2025. We rated neonatal services as good. The rating of neonatal services has been combined with the ratings of the other services from the last inspections. See our previous reports to get a full …

Ratings by service

Neonatal services
Good
May 2026
Maternity
Good
Jul 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
At this assessment we identified breaches of regulations in relation to the environment of the high dependency unit and governance oversight of the record system.
· 9 Sep 2026
Breach Safe
However, we found breaches of regulation in safe care and treatment, premises and equipment, good governance and staffing.
Regulation: Regulation 12 (Safe care and treatment) · 4 Jun 2026
Breach Safe
However, we rated safe as requires improvement as we found 7 breaches in regulations which related to safe care and treatment, environment, infection prevention control, staffing, and good governance.
Regulation: Regulation 12 (Safe care and treatment) · 4 Jun 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: 6 April 2023
Rating extracted from this report: Inspected but not rated
Actions indexed: 7 should-do

Read this inspection PDF

AI-extracted 3 Jun 2026

Earlier inspection findings

pre-2024 framework · 7 should-do

Should-do actions (7)

Recommended improvements to enhance service quality.

Should-do action 1 of 7
Should do
Safe
The trust should ensure that the staffing skill mix and agency/bank usage meets the requirements as set out in The Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine ‘Guidelines for the Provision of Intensive Care Services’.
Regulation: Regulation 18
Should-do action 2 of 7
Should do
Effective
The trust should ensure the unit meets National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines regarding intensive care access to speech and language therapists (SALT).
Regulation: Regulation 18
Should-do action 3 of 7
Should do
Responsive
The trust should consider progressing their plans to introduce a critical care outreach team.
Should-do action 4 of 7
Should do
Safe
The trust should ensure medical staff mandatory training rates meet or exceed the trust target.
Regulation: Regulation 18
Should-do action 5 of 7
Should do
Safe
The trust should ensure a patient prioritisation document is developed to enable staff to prioritise conflicting patient demands on the unit.
Regulation: Regulation 12
Should-do action 6 of 7
Should do
Well-led
The trust should consider reviewing how teams communicate across the trust structure and implement an improvement plan.
Should-do action 7 of 7
Should do
Well-led
The trust should ensure local audits are completed in line with the audit schedule and used to assess the quality and safety of the service.
Regulation: Regulation 17