Archived: Health Suite

We carried out this inspection alongside Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP). The Care Quality Commission and HMIP routinely coordinate inspections of prisons and healthcare providers.

In July 2014 Liverpool Community Healthcare Trust informed the Commission of issues regarding the quality of care and workforce concerns at HMP Liverpool prison. We continued to monitor the service at the prison and liaised with our partner agencies, including NHS England and commissioners.

We found patients care and treatment was compromised because of delays in patients receiving prescribed medicines. We saw limited evidence of staff learning from significant events.

Medicines management across the prison was poor.

Staffing shortages, both nursing and GPs, meant that the health care team did not always have the capacity to fully deliver a service at peak times.

The Crisis Intervention Service was insufficiently staffed to meet patient demand.

There were insufficient measures in place to monitor the quality of care and treatment provided to patients who attended outpatients, in-patients and the crisis intervention service.

Despite our findings, patients reported good levels of satisfaction with the care they received. Patients spoke positively about the care they received from nursing staff.

We observed nursing staff to be both caring and compassionate when delivering care and treatment to patients.

In interviews nurses and staff from the medicines management team demonstrated a real passion and a willingness to work to improve the service within the prison to ensure better outcomes for patients.

One person who used the service told us, 'I've got no complaints about healthcare, it's good, and it's just like a hospital down there.'

Another person said of healthcare: 'It's sound, they [staff] help you.'

We found since our last visit that there had been a small increase in the number of prisoners who had accessed appropriate health screens. We found that the prison regime and recent benchmarking exercises across the prison estate continued to impact on the delivery of the service but that staff within the Health Suite were proactive in their attempts to ensure that prisoners accessed appropriate health care assessments.

We found that staff morale across the Health Suite was much improved and that measures had been put in place and continued to be developed to support staff and increase their access and uptake of managerial and clinical supervision.

Medication management at the prison had improved and there were plans in place to develop an in house pharmacy service at the prison.

We found that since our last inspection the trust had developed its own complaints form and had provided their own complaints 'post boxes' on prison wings and in the out patients department.

People who used the service told us that staff were helpful and always treated them and spoke to them in a respectful way. One patient said: 'The nurses in outpatients are very helpful.'

Another Patient told us: 'Healthcare is sound, you can't knock it.'

People we spoke with confirmed that they had been provided with written information about healthcare facilities at the prison.

We found that new prisoners were not routinely offered a secondary health screen within 72 hours of their arrival at the prison.

We found that patients with long term chronic health conditions did not have a care plan.

We were concerned that patient confidentiality was compromised because the trust did not operate an effective complaints policy.

We found that measures to assess and monitor the quality of healthcare were not robust enough.