Chief Inspector of Hospitals rates Plymouth Community Healthcare CIC, as Good
England’s Chief Inspector of Hospitals has rated the services provided by Plymouth Community Healthcare CIC as Good overall following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission.
The CQC inspected the core services provided by Plymouth Community Healthcare CIC for three days in June 2016.
Plymouth Community Healthcare (trading as Livewell Southwest) is the largest independent social enterprise company in England. It provides community, physical and mental healthcare for around 270,000 people in Plymouth as well as some specialist services for those living in Devon and Cornwall. It is also the largest community interest service in England.
A team of inspectors, which included a variety of specialists and experts by experience, visited hospital wards and community based mental health services.Full reports including ratings for all of the provider’s core services will be available online tomorrow at:
Inspectors rated the care provided by staff to be Good regarding whether services were effective, caring, responsive, well-led and Requires Improvement for safety. While the Acute Mental Health Unit and Community Mental Health Team for adults with learning disabilities are rated as Outstanding.
Within the Community based mental health services for adults of working age CQC issued a warning notice on 15 July requiring significant improvements to the following areas:
•The provider must ensure that it assesses the risks to the health and safety of patients receiving care or treatment and do all that is reasonable to mitigate any such risks.
•The provider must ensure that persons providing care or treatment to patients have the qualifications, competence, skills and experience to do so safely.
•The provider must ensure the proper and safe management of medicines.
•The provider must ensure that systems or processes are established and operated effectively to assess, monitor and improve the quality and safety of the services, including the quality of the experience of patients.
Dr Paul Lelliott, Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals and CQC’s lead for mental health, said:
“Overall, Plymouth Community Healthcare CIC is providing good care to the people it serves. The organisation can be proud of many of the services that it manages.
“We found the service to be well led at board level with a leadership team including non-executive directors, who had a good understanding of the organisation and were not afraid to challenge the executive team.
“We observed staff treating patients with kindness, respect, compassion and empathy.. People we spoke to were positive in their views of staff and stated that they were fully involved in the care of their family member and felt well supported.. There was a range of feedback opportunities for staff, patients and carers to share their views and influence service developments.
“Inspectors did have concerns about the safety of patients accessing the community mental health teams for adults of working age and for older people. We found that the provider needs to take significant steps to improve the quality of this service to ensure urgent improvements take place. We issued a warning notice on 15 July 2016 that includes a timescale for improvements to be made.
“The provider has told us they have listened to our inspectors’ findings and we are confident that the executive team, with the support of their staff, will work to deliver these improvements on behalf of all of their patients. We will return in due course to check on the progress that they have made.”
The reports highlight several areas of good practice, including:
•The community learning disabilities team had been recognised for repatriation of people from long stay hospitals out of the area. They had successfully repatriated 18 people from out of area hospitals to their families, friends and communities. They were recognised nationally for this work and were awarded the Nursing Times Award for Learning Disabilities Team of the Year in 2015.
•Lee Mill hospital had taken a progressive approach toward managing issues relating to illicit substances previously referred to as “legal highs” within the ward environment in order to protect and maintain the safety of the patients and the staff team. This had been previously reported as a difficult issue to manage and was now being effectively managed with robust care planning and risk assessments to reduce the problem.
•Cothele ward had talking books and wind up radios for patients to use if they became unsettled at night time. This was used as a distraction technique and staff reported that patients became settled quickly when they listened to the talking books.
•There were opportunities for healthcare assistants to complete a training programme to enhance their skill levels as assistant practitioners, and to take on additional responsibilities at a higher banding with a view to developing their careers within the healthcare setting.
•The neuro development team were piloting a parenting skills course, Ascend, for parents of children with autistic spectrum conditions (ASC).. As current practice within Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services teams nationally is only to diagnose ASC and then offer advice, this was a significant addition to what would be expected from similar services.
•On the acute ward every nurse carried a small ligature cutter that was safe to carry with their personal alarm.. These personal, folded ligature cutters had been introduced in response to an incident a few years earlier.
•The Glenbourne Unit had a monthly carers’ group meeting and a working group for carers regarding the triangle of care – a working model of how to involve carers as an integral part of patients’ care.
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