St Mary’s Hospital in Warrington has implemented an action plan after the Care Quality Commission (CQC) ordered it to make improvements following an inspection this summer.
The CQC carried out an unannounced inspection of the hospital in June and July to follow up on concerns around patient care.
The hospital is run by Elysium Healthcare and provides specialist care for people with a brain injury, those with learning disabilities and autism, as well as a mental health acute ward for adults.
Following the inspection, the CQC’s overall rating remains as requires improvement, and was rated as requiring improvement for being safe and well led. However it was found to be good for being effective, caring and responsive to people’s needs.
Improvements ordered
The CQC ordered St Mary’s to make a number of improvements including:
- ensuring there are always sufficient numbers of suitably experienced staff deployed to meet the needs of people using the service;
- ensuring the use of blanket restrictions are minimised and any restrictions are individualised decisions based on individualised security and/or clinical considerations and;
- ensuring the hospital has robust governance processes to assess, monitor and improve the quality the services provided.
Ineffective systems
The CQC said it was concerned there were not enough permanent staff with the right skills and experience to care for patients and give them the specialist support they need.
However, it acknowledged managers were working hard to improve this by using the same bank and agency staff, who could get to know people and their individual needs as well as help people feel more comfortable by seeing a familiar face.
Brian Cranna, CQC head of hospital inspection for the north (mental health and community health services), said: “Managers need to work on having better oversight of what’s happening across the hospital.
“Systems weren’t effective enough to identify and ensure restrictive practices were kept to a minimum. Also, records weren’t up to date, therefore it wasn’t easy to check if processes had been followed when someone was placed in seclusion.
“We looked at incidents which had taken place since our last inspection which included a death at the service in March which is still under investigation. However, we were reassured that staff knew what incidents to report and how to report them in line with their policies.
“We were also informed of safeguarding incidents that have taken place. At the time of the inspection there were some safeguarding incidents still being investigated.”
Systems improvement action plan
In response, a spokesperson for Elysium Healthcare said: “The safety and wellbeing of our patients is our highest priority, and we fully accept the recommendations made by the Care Quality Commission in its latest inspection report.
“Despite the current nationwide healthcare recruitment challenges the team is working hard to ensure the hospital employs the very best team members.
“In addition, we have implemented a systems improvement action plan to ensure we meet the recommendations made by the CQC.
“We were pleased to note that inspectors observed our colleagues being caring in their interactions with patients and treating people with dignity and respect.
“We look forward to evidencing the required improvements to the CQC inspection team on their subsequent visit to the hospital.”
