- NHS hospital
King's College Hospital
Report from 15 January 2025 assessment
Contents
Ratings - Medical care (Including older people's care)
Our view of the service
King’s College Hospital is run by King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. The medical care service at King’s College Hospital provides care and treatment for general medical services and specialist services including renal, liver, hematology, cardiology, and stroke services, as well as care of older people’s services.
We carried out an unannounced inspection of medical care at King’s College Hospital on 8 and 9 April 2025 in line with our assessment priorities.
Overall, the service was rated as requires improvement.
We assessed all the quality statements from the safe, effective, caring, responsive, and well-led key questions. We rated safe and responsive as requirements improvement. Safe was rated as requires improvement due to insufficient nursing staff. The service was in breach of legal regulation in relation to Regulation 18 Staffing, Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. We have requested an action plan for the trust to address this.
Responsive was rated as requires improvement due to capacity issues affecting access and flow on the unit.
We rated effective, caring, and well led as good.
We looked at nine sets of patient clinical records; we spoke with 12 patients, 8 family members or friends, and 39 members of staff. We visited 13 wards including the discharge lounge, acute emergency care unit (AECU), frailty ward, acute medical assessment ward and older people’s services.
We assessed quality statements within key questions. Each quality statement assessed is awarded a score. Details on how we score can be found on our website: https://www.cqc.org.uk/about-us/how-we-do-our-job/ratings
You can find further information about how we carried out our assessments at:
https://www.cqc.org.uk/about-us/how-we-do-our-job/what-we-do-inspection
People's experience of this service
Many patients told us staff treated them with kindness, compassion, and dignity. They said they were listened to and felt involved in their care and treatment. Patients, their families, and carers spoke highly of staff, and felt staff were approachable, visible, and kind.
Patients, their family, and carers were positive about the care and treatment they received. They told us their needs were met.