- NHS hospital
Furness General Hospital
Report from 12 May 2025 assessment
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
The University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust (UHMBT) provides hospital services across the Morecambe Bay area - an area covering a thousand square miles in south Cumbria and north Lancashire. It operates from three main hospitals - Furness General Hospital in Barrow, the Royal Lancaster Infirmary and Westmorland General Hospital in Kendal.
Furness General Hospital has a range of general hospital services, with an emergency department, critical/coronary care unit and various consultant-led services. It provides a range of planned care including outpatients, diagnostics, therapies, day case and inpatient surgery.
We carried out an unannounced inspection of maternity care and urgent and emergency care at Furness General Hospital on 15, 16 and 17 of July 2025. Maternity care and urgent and emergency care are now rated good. The rating for these services has been combined with the ratings of the other services from previous inspections.
The rating of Furness General Hospital remains requires improvement.
We found that the service did not always provide safe care and treatment as the emergency department faced challenges in managing patient flow to the wider hospital. As a result, some patients spent time in areas that were not clinically appropriate. This was a breach of safe care and treatment.
The service was previously in breach of the legal regulations and improvements were found at this assessment.