Our governance
Our ambition is to offer excellent standards of customer service, patient safety, and clinical accountability but we are not complacent, and continue to always seek improvement.
We monitor clinical quality and safety, and report this from “Ward to Board” across every Spire hospital. By openly sharing information both within and between our hospitals, we are able to respond to incidents quickly and effectively, and to learn from - and avoid repeating - mistakes.
All of our Hospital Directors have been approved by the relevant regulator. In England this is the Care Quality Commission (CQC). In Scotland, Health Improvement Scotland (HIS) and in Wales, Healthcare Improvement Wales (HIW)). Each Hospital Director is individually accountable, alongside Spire, to these regulators for compliance with regulatory standards at their own hospital, helping to ensure the safety and quality of your care.
Consultant performance is monitored on a regular basis, and we operate regular on-site hospital reviews in line with the relevant regulators’ inspection methodology.
We work hard to maintain an open and transparent culture where anyone at any level can raise concerns without fear, safe in the knowledge that someone will listen and act on their feedback. We were the first major independent hospital group to have fully trained Freedom to Speak Up Guardians and all staff have access to a confidential third party whistleblowing hotline. This helps us identify and investigate concerns about staff and Consultants’ behaviour, practice and the way we run our hospitals.
When incidents do occasionally occur, we make every effort to respond quickly and effectively. We dedicate appropriate resource to both individual events and also any broader issues that might also arise. We share relevant information and lessons learnt both within our own organisation and with the NHS and other independent sector hospitals.
Our efforts in the area of patient safety and clinical quality have resulted in 98% of all Spire facilities being rated ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’ or the equivalents in Scotland and Wales, by the CQC, Health Improvement Scotland (HIS) and Health Inspectorate of Wales (HIW). In the coming months and years, we will continue to work with our regulators and the Independent Healthcare Providers Network, to further improve patient safety in our hospitals.