Archived: Falck (Alperton)

Updated 27 July 2017

Medical Services Ltd Alperton opened in 2009. It is an independent ambulance service in Alperton, London. The service serves a wide range of communities across the whole of London.

The service has had a registered manager in post since March 2012, who was also the accountable officer for controlled drugs (CDs). At the time of the inspection, a new manager had recently been appointed and was registered with the CQC in December 2016.

Medical Services limited Alperton is a third party subcontractor, subcontracted by two large ambulance providers. A third party subcontractor is defined as a firm that carries out work on behalf of larger organisation.

Updated 27 July 2017

Medical services Ltd Alperton is a service that provides emergency and urgent care, including the transportation of high dependency patients and a patient transport service (PTS).

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out the announced part of the inspection on 01 and 02 March 2017.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we ask the same five questions of all services: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs, and well-led?

Throughout the inspection, we took account of what people told us and how the provider understood and complied with the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

The main service provided by this service was emergency and urgent care. Where our findings on emergency and urgent care – for example, management arrangements – also apply to other services, we do not repeat the information but cross-refer to the emergency and urgent care core service. See emergency and urgent care section for main findings.

Services we do not rate

We regulate independent ambulance services but we do not currently have a legal duty to rate them. We highlight good practice and issues that service providers need to improve and take regulatory action as necessary.

We found the following areas of good practice within the service:

• Excellent coordination with other providers.

• Staff treating and caring for patients with compassion, dignity and respect.

• Staff expressing passion about their job and dedication to ensuring patients were provided with good care.

• Strong teamwork.

• High levels of competency and understanding of national guidelines

However, we also found the following issues that the service provider needs to improve:

• Management of controlled drugs (CDs) and record keeping did not adhere with national guidance.

• Auditing processes, and the use of outcomes to improve the service were not routinely monitored and therefore could not be used to improve the service.

• Adequate clinical governance structures were not in place.

Following this inspection, we told the provider that they must take some actions to comply with the regulations and that they should make other improvements, even though a regulation had not been breached, to help the service improve. We also issued the provider with two requirement notices that affected emergency and urgent care services. Details are at the end of the report.

Professor Edward Baker

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals London Region

Updated 27 July 2017

• This service reported no serious injuries.

• Staff were kept up to date on national guidelines via emails from the provider. However we saw no learning or actions taken from local audits to improve the service.

• The service was caring towards patients and we found no evidence to contradict this. The service was able to meet patients individual needs for example the service had the necessary vehicles available that were suitable for bariatric patients.

• However, the service did not follow their own concerns and complaints policy and failed to close two complaints out of five within their target of 25 days.

• Staff we spoke to felt proud to work for this service, however there was no staff feedback surveys within the last 12 months. Therefore the was a limited opportunity for the service to capture the staff’s opinions of the service.