Bolton One is a multi-purpose health and leisure centre located in the town centre of Bolton, which is part of Bolton NHS Foundation Trust.

A range of outpatient and diagnostic imaging services are provided from Bolton One including general outpatients, children’s outpatients, rheumatology, biomechanics, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, podiatry, pre-operative assessment, breast screening, plain film x-ray and obstetric ultrasound. There is also a hydrotherapy pool.

We visited Bolton One on Wednesday 23rd March 2016 as part of the comprehensive inspection of Bolton NHS Foundation Trust.

Overall we rated Bolton One as ‘Good’ across the areas of safe, caring, responsive and well-led. We are currently not confident that we are collecting sufficient evidence to rate effectiveness for Outpatients & Diagnostic Imaging and as a result, we haven’t rated the effective domain for this location.

There were areas at Bolton One where the trust needs to make improvements.

Importantly, the trust must:

• Ensure that paper records are stored securely.

• Ensure that appropriately skilled staff are in place to provide a biological therapy treatment service.

In addition the trust should:

• The trust should ensure that letters are provided to GPs in a timely way.

• The trust should ensure that patients are kept informed about any delays in outpatient and diagnostic imaging services and should monitor how long patients wait to be seen.

• The trust should ensure that the recovery plan for breast screening is completed within agreed timeframes.

• The trust should consider participating in the Imaging Services Accreditation Scheme (ISAS) and the Improving Quality in Physiological Services (IQIPS) accreditation scheme.

Professor Sir Mike Richards

Chief Inspector of Hospitals