A challenge has been issued to hospitals by The Healthcare Commission (HC) to regain the confidence of patients on cleanliness by bringing all services up to the standards of the best.
They found a third of the hospitals visited achieving the highest standards in cleanliness across the board. But two-thirds were not, with mental health hospitals performing particularly poorly out of those in the sample.
Simon Gillespie, head of operations at the Healthcare Commission, said: “We have found some excellent performance. It is a myth to say all our hospitals are dirty. Among the highest scores were hospitals of all types. This shows that healthcare managers can achieve the highest standards, and all should on behalf of patients. Nevertheless, the findings show that too many hospitals are failing to perform as well as they could. And some have particularly poor standards of cleanliness.”
He added: “Concern about cleanliness has been driven by the prevalence of hospital associated infections and the assumption that poor hygiene is contributing to this. If a hospital has dirty and poorly maintained facilities, patients will have little confidence that it can implement the more sophisticated precautions that are needed to prevent infection.”
