The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has suspended Mediscan Diagnostic Services Limited after receiving information of concern about the safety and quality of its services.
The CQC carried out an unannounced focused inspection of Mediscan’s services in Manchester and Oldham in June. The provider’s services included ultrasound scanning, endoscopy procedures including sigmoidoscopy, colonoscopy and gastroscopy, audiology and physiotherapy.
Inspectors have rated both locations inadequate overall and imposed conditions on the provider’s registration. This relates to infection prevention and control, equipment maintenance, medicines management, staff competencies, leadership and the provider’s system for managing risk.
Due to concerns raised by inspectors, CQC suspended Mediscan to keep people safe. This included all their satellite sites across England operating under the provider’s registration.
What inspectors found
- Leaders did not have the skills and abilities to run the service and did not understand and manage the priorities and issues the service faced. Policies and procedures were not reflective of the services provided.
- There were poor governance processes throughout the service and with partner organisations, and so staff at all levels could not be clear about their roles and accountabilities.
- There were poor risk management processes in place which did not allow for identification and escalation of relevant risks and issues or identify actions to reduce their impact.
- The service did not recognise and respond appropriately to abuse or discriminatory practice. There was insufficient attention to safeguarding children and adults. Staff did not always have the correct level of safeguarding training.
- The service did not always provide mandatory training in key skills to all staff or make sure everyone completed it.
- The service did not manage patient safety incidents well. Staff did not recognise and report incidents.
- Managers did not investigate incidents and did not share lessons with the team.
- The service did not clinically triage each patient referral.
- The service did not store records safely or securely.
- The service did not always have an open culture and staff did not always feel respected, supported, and valued.
However, inspectors also found that the checking of electrical equipment had been completed and was in date and that infection control prevention policy had been updated.
Not assured of improvements
Commenting on the action, CQC’s chief inspector of hospitals, Ted Baker, said: “During our inspection of Mediscan Diagnostic Services Limited, we were not assured that all the necessary improvements had been made since our previous inspection in April.
“At that previous inspection, we had significant concerns about risk management. When we carried out this inspection, it was disappointing to find the senior management team did not provide any evidence to demonstrate that they had made any changes or improvements to minimise risk to patients.
“We had previously highlighted issues with the endoscopy service and taken action to prevent the service from undertaking invasive procedures. However, staff were unable to provide evidence to show what improvements had been made to address the issues we raised.
“At this inspection we found that staff did not always have the correct level of safeguarding training, and some staff we spoke to, had no understanding of what a safeguarding incident might be or how to identify one.
“We also found that there was no assurance that rooms had been thoroughly cleaned. Cleaning logs were not clear and there was a risk that staff did not know which areas were clean and which weren’t.
“Following our inspection, we took urgent action and suspended Mediscan Diagnostic Services Limited to keep people safe.”
Health & Protection contacted Mediscan for comment but had not heard back by deadline.