Five hospitals judged to have had high levels of compliance.

NHS

HSE has contacted eight hospitals in the UK after Covid-related inspection uncovered health and safety contraventions that required formal action.

Part of its national spot check inspection programme, HSE inspected 17 acute hospitals between November and January, including 13 NHS Trusts in England and two NHS Health Boards in Scotland and Wales respectively.

In particular, HSE was scrutinising procedures put in place to ensure social distancing, cleaning and hygiene standards, ventilation, risk assessment, management arrangements specific to Covid-19, PPE, and how suspected cases were being dealt with. 

HSE said: “We found all of the NHS trusts and boards had invested significant time and effort to implement a variety of Covid control measures in the hospitals we inspected.

“Common themes included the importance of leadership visibility and having robust risk assessment and monitoring systems in place to ensure control measures are implemented and maintained.

Five hospitals were judged as having high levels of compliance while four were given advice, reported HSE. Assessments were shared with NHS Trusts and health boards across England, Scotland and Wales in order to raise awareness of areas that needed improvement.