Royal’s Urgent and Emergency Care service rated Good by CQC

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated Urgent and Emergency Care at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital as Good. This is an improvement from the service’s previous rating of Inadequate.

This Good rating follows an inspection which took place in December 2024 – inspectors rated the service Good for being Safe, Effective, Caring and Well Led, and Requires Improvement for being Responsive to people’s needs.

CQC inspectors highlighted how staff demonstrated kindness and compassion when delivering care and praised the culture of openness and collaboration within the service.

The CQC did highlight areas for improvement, including patient flow through the department and infection, prevention and control.

Natalie Hudson, Executive Managing Director of the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, said: “Our teams should be incredibly proud of this achievement, which reflects their hard work and commitment to providing the best care possible to our patients in what can be very challenging circumstances. To have their rating go from Inadequate to Good following an inspection which took place during a very busy winter should be commended and I am pleased the CQC has highlighted the care and compassion shown by our staff, as well as the supportive leadership of the service.

“Since this inspection took place we have improved our infection prevention and control performance and we will continue to focus on this area. We recognise there are still challenges around patient flow through the Emergency Department and admitting patients to wards more quickly, and we are working with our system partners to make further improvements and speed up the discharge of patients who no longer require hospital care.”

The full report will be available on the CQC website.

This was a focused inspection of Urgent and Emergency Care - the overall rating of the hospital remains Requires Improvement and the CQC will need to complete an inspection of all core services in order for this to change.

This is the first of six reports we expect the CQC to publish in the coming weeks, following service inspections at Aintree, Broadgreen and the Royal, as well as a Well Led inspection at the start of the year.