Enter and View: Blakelands Hospital

The visit was prearranged, following an invitation from Blakelands Hospital to carry out a second Enter and View visit, the previous visit being in December 2019. 

The purpose of this visit was to listen to patient experiences.

Summary

Blakelands provides treatments including cataract surgery, Inguinal, umbilical, or femoral hernia repairs, knee arthroscopy, hand surgery, anal procedures (haemorrhoids banding and injection etc). Lumps and bumps and minor skin procedures as well as upper and lower limb outpatient appointments (hip, knee, and shoulder replacement). The treatment centre has an x-ray department, outpatient consultation rooms, pre-assessment facilities, two operating theatres and a four bedded recovery bay. Whilst Blakelands treat privately insured and self-funding patients, a high proportion of their patients (90%) are referred from the NHS.

What we found

Staff attitudes and behaviour made up the largest part of our conversations with people; patients wanted to tell us what a difference receiving such good customer service made to their experience. The general theme was that because staff were kind and caring, patients felt listened to which helped to relax them and made their experience much better than what they have come to expect to in health settings. 

Patients feel well looked after and cared for during their stay, but feel a little more information on anticipated length of stay could be included in the information pack sent out.

What patients told us: 

“Staff treat you like an individual at all the times, you feel like they listen to you.”

“I’d give the receptionist a Gold Star if I could, She’s great.” 

“I don’t like hospitals but would come back here if I ever needed any other treatments, felt so at ease, staff are really great.”

Our recommendations

We recommend that, that in order to enhance the excellent service currently offered to patients: 

• If possible, increase the font size on the Online booking form as a high number of patients book for cataract surgery. 
• Consider increasing the number of disabled parking bays in the car park. 
• Becoming Dementia friendly in your signage would add to the high-quality service already provided, and could be standardised across Ramsay Healthcare.