![\"Basildon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1_Basildon-Hospital-Image-by-Google-Maps.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe Care Quality Commission has rated key hospitals in the county as ‘Requires Improvement’ or ‘Inadequate’<\/p>\n
Basildon Hospital(Image: Google Street View)<\/p>\n
Receiving hospital care that meets a high standard is important to everyone, no matter our age. Whether we need urgent treatment or specialist care, our hospitals are the places we rely on.<\/p>\n
But in Essex, four of our major cities have hospitals which the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has ranked as either \u2018Requires Improvement\u2019 or \u2018Inadequate.\u2019 In total, seven major hospitals in the county and the surrounding area have not met the standards expected by the healthcare watchdog.<\/p>\n
The list of hospitals includes one from each of the county’s major areas. Hospitals named in the list also include towns, where the hospital is the only one for miles around.<\/p>\n
Inspectors assess five essential areas to determine whether a hospital has met the expected standard. The CQC considers whether a practice is safe, effective, caring, responsive, and well-led. Each area is then rated from Outstanding to Inadequate.<\/p>\n
Here are the 7 hospitals in Essex, and their surrounding areas, which are ranked as Requires Improvement or Inadequate:Broomfield Hospital, Chelmsford- Requires ImprovementBasildon University Hospital, Basildon- InadequateColchester General Hospital, Colchester- Requires ImprovementThe Princess Alexandra Hospital, Harlow- Requires ImprovementSouthend University Hospital, Westcliff-on-Sea- Requires ImprovementQueen\u2019s Hospital, Romford- Requires ImprovementKing George Hospital, Ilford- Requires Improvement<\/p>\n
In response, Catherine Morgan, Chief Nurse for East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust said: \u201cWe welcomed the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) unannounced inspection visit in April 2025 and are delivering change through improvements in the hospital.<\/p>\n
“The report focused on medical care (including older people\u2019s care) and urgent and emergency services, and we have significantly improved staff levels in our older people’s wards and are making progress every week in reducing the number of patients waiting for care and operations. We are committed to delivering high-quality, safe and compassionate care to all of our patients.”<\/p>\n
Thom Lafferty, Chief Executive at The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust (PAHT), added: \u201cWe have recently welcomed a Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection of our hospital, which began on 11 November 2025 and concluded at the end of January 2026.<\/p>\n
“We are currently awaiting the results of this, having received a great deal of positive feedback on how our staff responded to the visit and from patients on our services during the inspection. However, we recognise the ongoing improvements required to fully meet the expectations of patients and staff, following the significant changes we have made to the organisation over the past 12 months.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dawn Scrafield, Chief Executive of Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust, said: \u201cWe\u2019ve already made lots of changes to our services since we were inspected back in February and April 2025. We have received extensive feedback from patients, staff and through inspections, but we recognise there are more improvements we need to make.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are working closely with local health partners and are part of a national improvement programme with NHS England, which is supporting us to make faster progress in better patient care and delivery.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe vast majority of actions raised by the CQC in their reports last year have been addressed, none of which would have been possible without the huge contributions of our staff as we continue to make changes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Care Quality Commission has rated key hospitals in the county as ‘Requires Improvement’ or ‘Inadequate’ Basildon Hospital(Image:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[126814,152112,33914,96308,164268,102,2960,44035,104,164269,159799,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-465812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-basildon","tag-broomfield-hospital","tag-chelmsford","tag-colchester","tag-harlow","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-ilford","tag-nhs","tag-romford","tag-southend","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}