Surgical care rating at King’s College Hospital improves to ‘Good’

30 July 2026 - The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated surgical care at King’s College Hospital as ‘Good’ overall following an inspection in April this year.

Surgical services at the hospital were previously rated ‘Requires Improvement’, but are now rated ‘Good’ overall, as well as ‘Good’ for each of the five CQC key inspection standards, namely safe, effective, responsive, caring, and well-led.

This reflects the significant improvements put in place by staff at King’s, who deliver one of the busiest surgical services in the country across a range of local and highly specialist areas.

The Trust provides surgical services across a number of hospital sites, but this CQC inspection included the King’s College Hospital site based at Denmark Hill only.

The CQC praised staff within the service for being visible and approachable, and for providing patients with the practical and emotional support they need.

The service was also praised for offering bespoke support for patients accessing surgical services who are living with mental health issues, dementia, or a learning disability.

The CQC also found a strong culture of learning from incidents, and that there was good multi-disciplinary team-working with the service, and a collaborative approach.

Staff were also recognised for communicating in ways people could understand, and for ensuring they had the information they needed to give informed consent.

The inspection team also said that staff worked well with both each other, and other organisations, to make people’s care journey as seamless as possible.

Matthew Trainer, Chief Executive at the Trust, welcomed the CQC’s findings. He said:

“It is great to see the hard work of our teams recognised. Patients should feel confident they will receive high-quality surgical care when they come to King’s.

“The feedback from the inspection team is positive and reflects lots of hard work. It shows we have a learning culture in surgery, and that staff are committed to listening to patients and doing their very best for them.

“It was lovely to read the feedback from patients about our staff, who described their care as ‘great’, ‘wonderful’, ‘professional and kind’.”

You can read the full report on the CQC website from 30 July.