Our enter and view report on Sussex Partnership Foundation Trust sites
Our visits to Mill View Hospital and Rutland Gardens were part of PLACE or ‘Patient-Led Assessments of the Care Environment’.
Our report provides a summary of our visits, including our observations.
PLACE is delivered as a national programme and all data is collected and formally analysed by NHS Digital. They will publish detailed reports after the program has ended on 30th November.
PLACE asks patient assessors to look at six distinct areas when carrying out visits. Below, we have provided a very high-level summary of how we would assess the two sites we visited. More detail about each visit is given in the tables contained in our full report (which is only 7 pages long).
Area assessed and Healthwatch’s main observations
Cleanliness: Overall, very good across all areas
Food and drink: Overall, very good
Patient privacy and dignity: Overall, very good across all areas
Supporting dementia patients: Overall, very good across most areas
Supporting disabled patients: Overall, very good across most areas
External areas: Overall, very good across all areas
What is PLACE?
PLACE assessments focus on the environment in which care is delivered to people, such as hospital wards. It does not look at clinical care or how well staff are doing their job.
Good environments matter. Every NHS patient should be cared for with compassion and dignity in a clean, safe environment. Where standards fall short, this should be drawn to the attention of managers so that improvements can be made.
Assessments involve local people (known as patient assessors) going into local hospitals to assess how good the environment is.
PLACE visits were last carried out in 2019. COVID stopped them from happening in 2020 and 2021.
Thank you
Healthwatch would like to express its thanks to the Trust for inviting us to participate in PLACE. This allows us to assess the patient environment first-hand and share our observations. We would particularly like to thank Gavin Ford and Craig Mooney from Facilities for supporting our visits and accompanying us on each one. They welcomed our observations and recorded any repairs or actions that were needed. It is obvious that the Trust takes PLACE very seriously and is keen to act on its findings.
