Source · CQC inspection

Worthing Hospital

Provider University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust Type NHS Healthcare Organisation Region South East Last inspected 11 May 2026

Overall rating: Requires Improvement View full CQC report

Domain ratings

Five CQC key questions

Safe

Requires Improvement

Effective

Requires Improvement

Caring

Outstanding

Responsive

Requires Improvement

Well-led

Requires Improvement

Current CQC assessment

Single Assessment Framework

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

Requires Improvement Assessed 11 May 2026

The service is not performing as well as it should and we have told the service how it must improve.

Date of assessment: 10 to 11 September 2025. Worthing Hospital provides a range of NHS hospital services. This assessment looked at services for children and young people as part of our inspection schedule, which we rated as good. The rating of services for children and young people has 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 Worthing Hospital. The rating of Worthing Hospital is requires improvement. At this assessment we …

Ratings by service

Services for children & young people

Good

Jul 2025

Services for children & young people

Good

Mar 2025

Maternity

Good

Nov 2024

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 (13)

Breach Safe

At this assessment we found breaches of regulations in relation to safe care and treatment.

Regulation: Regulation 12 (Safe care and treatment) · 11 May 2026

Breach Safe

At that assessment the service was rated good but was in breach of regulations relating to safe care and treatment, good governance, and staffing.

Regulation: Regulation 12 (Safe care and treatment) · 11 May 2026

Breach Safe

At this assessment we found breaches of regulations in relation to safe care and treatment and staffing.

Regulation: Regulation 12 (Safe care and treatment) · 11 May 2026

Breach Overall

The breach was in relation to assurance through auditing systems, setting of targets and benchmarking processes.

· 27 Feb 2026

Breach Safe

The service was previously in breach of the legal regulation in relation to Safe Care and Treatment.

Regulation: Regulation 12 (Safe care and treatment) · 27 Feb 2026

Breach Safe

We found 2 breaches in the regulations in relation to safe care and treatment and governance.

Regulation: Regulation 12 (Safe care and treatment) · 27 Feb 2026

Breach Overall

We also found breaches in relation to the governance of the service.

· 27 Feb 2026

Breach Overall

The breaches related to appropriate management of risks including ligature risk assessments, medicines management and safeguarding training.

· 27 Feb 2026

Breach Overall

We assessed the maternity services in response to ongoing concerns about the services and follow up on past breaches of regulation.

· 27 Feb 2026

Breach Overall

We found breaches of regulations in relation to: risk assessments of the environment, staff training and governance of the service.

· 27 Feb 2026

Breach Safe

We found breaches of regulations relating to safe care and treatment, good governance, and staffing.

Regulation: Regulation 12 (Safe care and treatment) · 8 May 2025

Breach Safe

In our assessment of services for children and young people we found breaches of Regulation 12, 17 and 18 of the Health and Social Care Act (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.

Regulation: Regulation 12 (Safe care and treatment) · 19 Jun 2024

Breach Overall

As a result of these findings we have asked the trust to submit an action plan in regards to each breach.

· 19 Jun 2024

Earlier inspection findings

pre-2024 framework · 28 must-do 2 should-do

Must-do actions (28)

Legal requirements based on regulation breaches identified during inspection.

Must-do action 1 of 28

Must do

Safe

The trust must ensure that all patients on medical wards receive regular risk assessments upon admission and throughout their stay and take all reasonable steps to mitigate any identified risks. This includes mouth care, skin and nutritional assessments as well as ligature risk assessments for patients with suicidal ideation for staff to use.

Regulation: Regulation 12.

⚠ Staff did not always complete and update risk assessments for each patient. Staff did not always remove or minimise risks. There was no structured ligature risk assessment in place.

Must-do action 2 of 28

Must do

Safe

The trust must ensure that equipment including heating systems are suitable for purpose and properly maintained.

Regulation: Regulation 12.

⚠ The heating system on Beckett Ward had been broken since last year. There was an overdue hoist servicing, an air conditioning unit in a female bay without a Portable Appliance Testing (PAT) date and 2 fans which had no servicing date.

Must-do action 3 of 28

Must do

Safe

The trust must ensure equipment in ward environments is moved and stored in a suitable location and avoids emergency exits being blocked.

Regulation: Regulation 12.

⚠ Beckett Ward had clutter around their resuscitation trolley. A hoist and a computer would have to be moved out of the way in an emergency situation for staff to access the resuscitation trolley.

Must-do action 4 of 28

Must do

Safe

The trust must ensure the proper and safe management of medicine including prescribing systems.

Regulation: Regulation 12.

⚠ Staff did not always complete medicine records accurately and keep them up-to-date. We observed empty boxes on prescription charts, and in one case, an exclamation mark with no code to indicate why a medicine was omitted.

Must-do action 5 of 28

Must do

Safe

The trust must ensure the Patient Group Directive treatment of neutropenic patients is reviewed in a timely manner.

Regulation: Regulation 12.

⚠ Senior leaders told us the PGD was out of date and training was not occurring, which limited staff’s ability to follow the pathway.

Must-do action 6 of 28

Must do

Safe

The trust must ensure appropriate training, in line with guidance, is in place and completed by staff to support patients with learning disabilities, dementia and autism.

Regulation: Regulation 12.

⚠ Despite a legal requirement since July 2022 for all staff to receive training on interacting with people with learning disabilities and autism, only 18 staff had completed the full training by June 2023.

Must-do action 7 of 28

Must do

Well-led

The trust must ensure that patient record documents and systems are reviewed to ensure staff have access to patient information that is accessible, accurate and up to date across all electronic or paper-based records.

Regulation: Regulation 17.

⚠ Patient record documents and systems were stored in different places and formats, including proformas, multiple electronic records, medical folders, nursing folders, Allied Health Professional (AHP) folders, and end of bed notes. This disjointed approach made it difficult to review patient records.

Must-do action 8 of 28

Must do

Well-led

The trust must review its audit monitoring systems to effectively improve the quality and safety of the services.

Regulation: Regulation 17.

⚠ Risks associated with gaps in patient assessment and care delivery, lack of audits, for example, of content and quality of patient records and sepsis compliance were not detailed in the risk register.

Must-do action 9 of 28

Must do

Well-led

The trust must ensure they take measures to restrict unauthorised access patient record documents.

Regulation: Regulation 17.

⚠ Patient notes trolleys were left open on all medical wards we visited, leaving confidential patient information easily accessible to unauthorised personnel.

Must-do action 10 of 28

Must do

Well-led

The trust should ensure the consistent completion of DoLS paperwork that matches patient’s needs.

Regulation: Regulation 17.

⚠ There was inconsistent completion of Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) paperwork which did not always match the patient’s needs.

Must-do action 11 of 28

Must do

Safe

The trust must ensure there are sufficient numbers of suitably qualified staff to keep patients safe.

Regulation: Regulation 12.

⚠ The service did not always have enough nursing and support staff with the right qualifications, skills, training and experience to keep patients safe from avoidable harm and to provide the right care and treatment. The service did not always have enough medical staff with the right qualifications, skills, training and …

Must-do action 12 of 28

Must do

Well-led

The trust must ensure that workforce data for the trust can be separated to show individual site performance.

Regulation: Regulation 17.

⚠ It was not possible to identify mandatory training compliance figures for Worthing Hospital. The medical division was across both Worthing Hospital and St Richard’s Hospital and the staffing data was not separated into data for each individual hospital.

Must-do action 13 of 28

Must do

Responsive

The trust must ensure they have an out of hours discharge policy to reduce risks relating to patients when discharged out of hours.

Regulation: Regulation 17.

⚠ From May to July 2023 there were 208 patients discharged between 10pm and 8am. The trust did not have an out-of-hours discharge policy, so staff did not have clear guidance to follow when discharging patients late at night.

Must-do action 14 of 28

Must do

Safe

The trust must ensure that medicines are used once opened in line with manufacturers guidance.

Regulation: Regulation 12.

⚠ Medicines had been prepared by staff, ready to be administered to patients, but they had been left unattended.

Must-do action 15 of 28

Must do

Safe

The trust must ensure that staff complete mandatory training in line with their role and that oversight of targets is effectively monitored.

Regulation: Regulation 12.

⚠ Not all staff were up to date and there was no plan to improve compliance. Compliance with conflict management training was significantly lower than the trust target and showed only 80% of staff had completed this. Data also showed only 84% of staff had completed moving and handling training for …

Must-do action 16 of 28

Must do

Safe

The trust must ensure appropriate training, in line with guidance, is in place and completed by staff to support patients with learning disabilities, dementia and autism.

Regulation: Regulation 12.

⚠ The trust had not fully implemented dedicated training on recognising and responding to patients with learning disabilities and autism.

Must-do action 17 of 28

Must do

Safe

The trust must ensure there are enough nursing staff to keep patients safe.

Regulation: Regulation 12.

⚠ The service did not have enough nursing, allied health professionals and support staff to keep patients safe from avoidable harm and to provide the right care and treatment. On all wards we visited, we saw actual nurse staffing was consistently below planned establishment.

Must-do action 18 of 28

Must do

Effective

The trust must ensure that all staff receive timely appraisals in line with provider policy.

Regulation: Regulation 12.

⚠ Managers did not always meet appraisal targets or hold regular supervision meetings with them to provide support and development. The overall appraisal compliance figures for surgery division were 82%, which was lower than the trust target of 90%.

Must-do action 19 of 28

Must do

Safe

The trust must ensure that controlled drug records and the oversight of these are in line with national guidance.

Regulation: Regulation 12.

⚠ Every theatre logbook used to record administration of controlled drugs (CDs) were not completed in line trust policy and best practice guidance. It was recorded the medicines that had been drawn up by staff, but not the amount given to patients. Controlled drug stock checks were not completed twice daily …

Must-do action 20 of 28

Must do

Safe

The trust must ensure the monitoring of anaesthetic machine checks is recorded and aligns with best practice guidance.

Regulation: Regulation 12.

⚠ Anaesthetic machine safety checking logbooks had not been completed on multiple occasions where there has been activity within theatres.

Must-do action 21 of 28

Must do

Safe

The trust must ensure that the systems used to monitor WHO checklist compliance, including brief and debrief, are effective in demonstrating compliance and able to show areas for improvement effectively in line with NPSA guidance.

Regulation: Regulation 12.

⚠ Average compliance for surgical briefs between May – July 2023 was 60%. For the same period compliance for debriefs was 30%, which was significantly below the trust target.

Must-do action 22 of 28

Must do

Safe

The trust must review its existing IPC audit monitoring systems to identify any shortfalls in infection prevention and control so action can be taken to make improvements when needed.

Regulation: Regulation 12.

⚠ There was a lack of consistency in the completion of IPC audits between surgical areas. The overview report generated for February to July 2023 showed theatres at Worthing recording a compliance of 0%.

Must-do action 23 of 28

Must do

Safe

The trust must ensure equipment in ward and theatre environments is moved or stored in a suitable location and avoids emergency exits being blocked.

Regulation: Regulation 12.

⚠ Large amounts of equipment such as Xray equipment, and specialist surgical equipment were stored in corridors as there was no secure areas for these to be stored in. On Chiltington Ward the corridor leading to the Enhanced Surgical Care Unit (ESCU) contained various large items of equipment, including the ward …

Must-do action 24 of 28

Must do

Responsive

The trust must ensure action is taken to improve their compliance with national waiting list targets and that performance data for the trust can be separated to show site performance.

Regulation: Regulation 17.

⚠ The service performed second worst in the South East England region for First Definitive Treatment (FDT) within 31 days, 84.8% compared to 95% in the region. The trust was unable to supply information or data that focused on specific patient groups or lengths of stay.

Must-do action 25 of 28

Must do

Well-led

The trust must ensure that workforce data for the trust can be separated to show individual site performance.

Regulation: Regulation 17.

⚠ The trust was unable to supply information or data that focused on specific patient groups or lengths of stay. This limited the trust’s ability to implement meaningful improvement by highlighting areas of concern.

Must-do action 26 of 28

Must do

Well-led

Regulation: Regulation 17.

⚠ Individual care records, including clinical data, were not consistently written, and managed in a way that kept people safe. There was no set order for the paper-based notes which meant information could not be easily located.

Must-do action 27 of 28

Must do

Well-led

The trust must ensure organisational wide learning is shared within the trust to reduce the risk of repeated incidents.

Regulation: Regulation 17.

⚠ Organisational wide learning had not been well implemented and staff felt incidents from other sites was not always shared throughout the trust.

Must-do action 28 of 28

Must do

Effective

The trust must ensure that guidance documents have been reviewed and are up to date.

Regulation: Regulation 17.

⚠ The standardisation process was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning some guidance was past their review date. Folders in theatres contained policies that were out of date and this included the trust business continuity plan dated 2020.