Macclesfield District General Hospital

Ratings - Medical care (Including older people's care)

• Overall

  Requires improvement

• Safe

  Requires improvement

• Effective

  Requires improvement

• Caring

  Good

• Responsive

  Requires improvement

• Well-led

  Requires improvement

Our view of the service

Date of assessment 29 April to 10 September 2025. We conducted an on-site, comprehensive assessment visit of medical care (including elderly care) services on 8 to 10 July and 8 September 2025 in response to concerns around safe care and treatment.

We rated the service as Requires Improvement. We found breaches of 7 of the legal regulations in relation to person centred care, consent, safe care and treatment, complaints, governance, staffing and duty of candour.

Key issues included poor management of safety risks, poor compliance and understanding of the Mental Capacity Act, low training compliance, delays in discharge and access to care. Governance was notably weak, with poor documentation control, outdated and inconsistent policies and lack of oversight of risks in the service.

However, staff demonstrated kindness and compassion, patients felt respected and cared for, and there was a positive culture of learning from incidents. The service showed good practice in workforce wellbeing, diversity, and freedom to speak up, and had effective multi-disciplinary collaboration and community engagement.

We requested an action plan following publication of the final report.

People's experience of this service

Patients generally praised staff for being kind, caring, and respectful, with many describing their care as “excellent” and saying they “couldn’t fault the staff.” They felt treated with dignity and appreciated the compassion shown. However, some patients reported discomfort due to issues like hard mattresses and delays in discharge. People also expressed frustration with seeing multiple doctors, which led to inconsistent care plans.

While the people we spoke with expressed they were mostly happy with their care, our assessment found elements of the care did not meet the expected standards and people’s rights were not always respected or upheld.