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West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust

NHS trust · ODS code RWG

About this trust

Type
NHS acute trust
Hospitals
3 on the CQC register
Website
www.westhertshospitals.nhs.uk

Care Quality Commission rating

Trust-wide rating, most recent inspection: 2020-06-17.

Requires improvement 2 of 4 CQC bands

Care Quality Commission, Open Government Licence v3.0, retrieved 2026-10-25.

What the CQC inspected

The CQC rates every service against five key questions. These are the ratings from the most recent inspection.

Safe
Requires improvement
Are people protected from abuse and avoidable harm?
Effective
Good
Does care, treatment and support achieve good outcomes and follow the best available evidence?
Caring
Good
Do staff involve and treat people with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect?
Responsive
Requires improvement
Are services organised to meet people's needs?
Well-led
Good
Do leadership, management and governance assure high-quality care?

Care Quality Commission, Open Government Licence v3.0, retrieved 2026-10-25.

What patients said

The NHS Friends and Family Test asks patients whether they would recommend the service. Responses for May 2026.

Inpatient care
97%
would recommend · 1,077 responses
A&E
77%
would recommend · 97 responses
Outpatient appointments
96%
would recommend · 1,488 responses

NHS England Friends and Family Test, Open Government Licence v3.0, retrieved 2026-10-25. The FFT is not a formal performance measure and response rates vary between services.

Cancer waiting times

How quickly this trust diagnoses and starts treatment for people referred with a suspicion of cancer. Data for March 2026. Targets are the NHS operational standards. No English region currently meets the 62-day standard.

62-day treatment
79%
% starting first cancer treatment within 62 days of an urgent GP referral
target 85%
28-day diagnosis
81%
% told they have cancer, or that they do not, within 28 days of an urgent referral
target 75%
31-day treatment
98%
% starting first treatment within 31 days of the decision to treat
target 96%

62-day treatment by cancer type

The share of patients who began treatment within 62 days of an urgent referral, for each type this trust reports. The national aim is 85%. Numbers per type are smaller, so they move more from month to month.

Cancer typeWithin 62 days
Breast87%
Lung83%
Bowel80%
Prostate73%
Skin95%
Gynaecological55%
Head and neck50%
Lymphoma67%
Oesophagus and stomach78%
Liver and bile duct76%
Other urological50%
Other blood78%

NHS England Cancer Waiting Times, Open Government Licence v3.0, retrieved 2026-10-25. Provisional monthly data. Small numbers of patients can move a percentage sharply.

Mortality (SHMI)

The Summary Hospital-level Mortality Indicator compares the number of people who die after care at this trust with the number expected, given how ill the patients were. Rolling 12 months to August 2025.

As expected SHMI 0.951.00 = as expected

NHS Digital, Accredited Official Statistic, Open Government Licence v3.0, retrieved 2026-10-25. The SHMI is not a measure of the quality of care and a “higher than expected” band is a flag for further investigation, not a judgement. It must not be used to rank trusts. It does not include deaths of patients receiving palliative care where that is coded.

Research output

Papers published by researchers affiliated with this trust, indexed by OpenAlex.

64 papers in 2026

2022: 102 · 2023: 67 · 2024: 87 · 2025: 145 · 2026: 64

Top subject areas:

Breast Cancer Treatment StudiesCOVID-19 Clinical Research StudiesCardiac, Anesthesia and Surgical OutcomesCardiac Imaging and DiagnosticsRheumatoid Arthritis Research and Therapies

See the paper list on OpenAlex →

OpenAlex, CC0, retrieved 2026-10-25. Counts by publication year, not by when a paper's affiliation record was last updated - a recent year's count can still rise as OpenAlex indexes more of that year's output.

NHS waiting times, trust-wide

Weeks from referral to treatment for NHS-funded care, across all this trust's sites.

Source: NHS England Referral to Treatment. Median wait is for the latest published month; the trend covers every month since we began keeping the series.
SpecialtyMedian waitWithin 18 weeksPatients waitingTrend
All specialties11 wks70%44,9462 weeks shorter since Jan 2026
Cardiology10 wks76%4,6641 week shorter since Jan 2026
Dermatology9 wks84%3,6961 week shorter since Jan 2026
Ear, nose and throat19 wks47%3,1762 weeks shorter since Jan 2026
Elderly medicine8 wks95%582 weeks longer since Jan 2026
Gastroenterology9 wks88%3,3192 weeks shorter since Jan 2026
General internal medicine4 wks100%9no change since Jan 2026
General surgery15 wks57%3,2571 week shorter since Jan 2026
Gynaecology9 wks71%2,2183 weeks shorter since Jan 2026
Neurology11 wks75%1,2936 weeks shorter since Jan 2026
Neurosurgery0 wks100%16 weeks shorter since Oct 2025
Ophthalmology13 wks63%3,3921 week shorter since Jan 2026
Oral surgery15 wks57%2,8031 week shorter since Jan 2026
Other medical services8 wks85%1,8134 weeks shorter since Jan 2026
Other mental health services5 wks100%3no change since Nov 2025
Other services8 wks96%1565 weeks longer since Jan 2026
Other surgical services9 wks79%2,0691 week longer since Jan 2026
Paediatric services10 wks74%2,6606 weeks shorter since Jan 2026
Respiratory medicine9 wks85%1,6843 weeks shorter since Jan 2026
Rheumatology10 wks71%1,0522 weeks shorter since Jan 2026
Trauma and orthopaedics15 wks55%4,826no change since Jan 2026
Urology11 wks72%2,797no change since Jan 2026

NHS-funded care only. Retrieved 2026-10-25.

Hospitals in this trust

Each is inspected and rated separately.

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Data shown with the date it was retrieved. Waiting times are NHS statistics for the named provider and change every month. How we source and check this.