19.03.14
CQC warns trust to ‘improve care’ at two centres
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has warned Central and North West London (CNWL) NHS Foundation Trust that it must improve the care it provides to patients at the Campbell Centre, Milton Keynes, and 3 Beatrice Place, Kensington.
Following an unannounced inspection at the Campbell Centre in November 2013, inspectors found that, while the trust had put improvement plans in place, the service – a 38-bedded inpatient unit providing acute mental health services – was failing to meet all eight standards checked. On three of these – care and welfare of people, safety and suitability of premises, and assessing and monitoring the quality of service provision – warning notices were issued to the trust.
Among CQC’s findings at the Campbell Centre, care plans and risk assessments were not always updated placing people at risk of harm; processes in place to protect patients from the risks associated with the management of medicines and safeguarding were not always followed; and governance and quality monitoring of the service was in need of improvement.
The trust has also been warned that it must improve the care it provides to people living in 3 Beatrice Place, after an inspection revealed that care delivered was not appropriately recorded or reviewed; and care arrangements focused on the delivery of personal interventions as opposed to recovery and wellbeing; and the provider had failed to respond appropriately to an allegation of abuse.
Matthew Trainer, regional director of CQC in London, said: “CNWL NHS Foundation Trust has been failing to meet the required standard in these services for some time. These are complex services that provide care to vulnerable people and the improvement plans that the trust has in place need to start showing hard results.
“People are entitled to be treated and cared for in services which are safe, effective, caring, well run, and responsive to their needs. We will return to both the Campbell Centre and Beatrice Place shortly to check whether the required improvements have been made and whether we need to take further action - and will report further in due course.”
CNWL has stated that it accepts the CQC’s conclusions and has already started to implement an action plan.
Claire Murdoch, chief executive of CNWL, said, “We accept the CQC’s judgements and apologise to patients and families who feel let down. Our staff will feel that too; we’re proudly NHS and want services to be the best they can be.
“Safety is our top priority and we’re investing in it but that’s a dented claim when Inspectors don’t see accurate paperwork, training up to date and recorded, and every legality and protection observed - something, as a nurse myself, I know very well. CQC Inspectors can come here at any time to check but I rely on the ‘inspectors’ here every day, our staff, to deliver the standards they would want their own relatives to receive. We will deliver improvements.”
The trust employs about 7,000 staff providing more than 300 different health services across 150 sites and in community settings.
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