Birmingham Heartlands Hospital was previously managed by Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust. On 1 April 2018 a merger by acquisition took place of Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust by University Hospitals of Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. As such Birmingham Heartlands Hospital is now part of University Hospitals of Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust.

We have not taken the previous ratings of services at Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust into account when aggregating the trust’s overall rating. CQC’s revised inspection methodology states when a trust acquires or merges with another service or trust in order to improve the quality and safety of care, we will not aggregate ratings from the previously separate services or providers at trust level for up to two years. During this time, we would expect the trust to demonstrate that they are taking appropriate action to improve quality and safety.

At this inspection we did not inspect all eight core services, therefore we are unable to provide an aggregated location rating. We will return in due course to carry out inspections of those core services we didn’t inspect this time. We will then aggregate all of the core service ratings to provide overall key question and location rating for Birmingham Heartlands Hospital.

For an overview of our findings at this inspection please see overall summary above.