27 August 2020
During an inspection looking at part of the service
North West Ambulance Base is operated by Ambulance Training and Staffing Solutions Ltd. The service provides emergency and urgent care and patient transport service.
We inspected this service using our focused inspection methodology. We carried out the short-announced inspection on 27 August 2020. We focused on infection prevention and control procedures.
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 patient transport services. The service also provided emergency and urgent care services, mainly for a local NHS ambulance trust. Where our findings on patient transport services – for example, management arrangements – also apply to other services, we do not repeat the information but cross-refer to the patient transport services core service.
We did not rate the service as this was a focussed responsive inspection.
- The service did not always control infection risk well. Staff did not always use equipment and control measures to protect patients, themselves and others from infection. They did not always keep the premises visibly clean.
- The storage of equipment did not always keep people safe.
- The service did not always manage clinical waste well.
- The design, maintenance and use of facilities, premises and vehicles did not always keep people safe
- There was no evidence that important equipment was highlighted on vehicle inventories, such as filtering facepiece (FFP3) masks or other equipment that would be used for aerosol generating procedures (AGPs).
- Leaders did not operate effective governance processes, throughout the service. Staff at all levels were not always clear about their roles and accountabilities.
- Leaders and teams did not always use systems to manage performance effectively. They did not always identify and escalate risks and issues or identify actions to reduce their impact.
However, we found the following areas of good practice:
- They had plans to cope with unexpected events.
- Equipment and vehicles in use during the inspection were visibly clean.
Following this inspection, we told the provider that it must take some actions to comply with the regulations and that it 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 notice(s) that affected patient transport services and emergency and urgent care. Details are at the end of the report.
Ann Ford
Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals North, on behalf of the Chief Inspector of Hospitals