Patient-Led Assessments of the Care Environment (PLACE)

Good environments matter. Every NHS patient should be cared for with compassion and dignity in a clean, safe environment.

The unannounced Patient Led Assessment of the Care Environment (PLACE) inspections are carried out every year at each of our hospital sites (apart from during the COVID-19 pandemic when this was put on hold), as part of a government initiative to drive improvements to hospital environments.

The PLACE inspections involve local people (known as patient assessors) going into hospitals as part of teams to assess how the environment supports the provision of clinical care, including assessing privacy and dignity, food, cleanliness and general building maintenance, and the extent to which the environment is able to support the care of those with dementia or with a disability.

We recruit and train patient assessors to undertake PLACE assessments at our sites. Members of the public and patients who have had experience of their local hospital can be a patient assessor, and we provide guidance for the patient assessors to support them undertaking these inspections. Trust staff are not permitted to be patient assessors.

PLACE assessments focus exclusively on the environment in which care is delivered and do not cover clinical care provision or how well staff are doing their job.