Steevi Henderson considers the Quality Report on the South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust published by the Care Quality Commission (‘CQC’) on 05.10.2017.
The CQC monitors, inspects and regulates health and social care services.
When inspecting an NHS Trust they rate them for safety, efficacy, caring, responsiveness and whether they are well-led. Trusts are then given an overall rating.
The ratings given are Inadequate, Requires Improvement, Good and Outstanding.
The inspection of the South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust was carried out on 15-18 May 2017 and provided the following ratings:
- (Safe) Inadequate
- (Effective) Requires Improvement
- (Caring) Good
- (Responsive) Requires Improvement
- (Well-Led) Inadequate
The Trust was given an overall rating of Inadequate.
The Trust had been previously inspected on 3-6 May 2016 when the ratings given (published 29.09.2016) were:
- (Safe) Inadequate
- (Effective) Requires Improvement
- (Caring) Good
- (Responsive) Requires Improvement
- (Well-Led) Inadequate
The Trust was, again, given an overall rating of Inadequate.
Because of the ratings given in May 2016 the CQC issued a warning notice and placed the Trust into special measures.
Their report details a huge number of areas for improvement (some of which need to be improved as a matter of urgency as they involve breaches of the HSCA (RA) regulations).
The key problem areas include:
- Poor medication management:- by not protecting service users against the risk of inappropriate use and management of medications (with only 73% attending training surrounding medication management).
- Poor infection control:- by failing to train key personnel, failing to follow best practice and failing to store clinical waste bags appropriately.
- Insufficient staffing:- of clinicians within the Trust.
- Patient outcomes:- which were found to be worse than most other Ambulance Trusts in the country.
- Response times:- which again were noted to be worse than most other ambulance services.
- Poor call abandonment rates:- which were found to be worsening.
- Highest priority calls:- failure to meet performance targets.
- Consistency of responses to callers:- lack of consistency across the 3 main centres acting independently from each other.
- Leadership failures:- leadership team unable to understand severity and risk of call recording failures.
- Culture:- not encouraging openness and candour.
- Lack of Progress:- Insufficient or no progress has been made surrounding the concerns reported in the 2016 inspection.
The full report can be found at http://www.cqc.org.uk/location/RYD6A.
Steevi Henderson, Solicitor at Fairweathers Solicitors LLP, commented:-
“Arguably the most concerning feature of this report is that little or no progress has been made to improve the service since the May 2016 report. We can only hope that with persistence the CQC will be able to encourage the Trust to improve their standards and consequently patient outcomes, response times etc.”
Steevi is a Medical Negligence Solicitor with years experience dealing with a wide variety of claims.
If you or a loved one believe that you were treated negligently by South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust or other service and need the assistance of an experienced and accredited team of Medical Negligence Solicitors then please do not hesitate to phone us free on 0800 999 5585, request a call back or submit your case details.