The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has published a report following an inspection of The Priory Ticehurst House, in Wadhurst, East Sussex.
The Priory Ticehurst House is an independent hospital which provides inpatient mental health treatment to adults and young people.
In early April, CQC carried out an unannounced comprehensive inspection of the child and adolescent mental health wards (CAMHS) and the acute wards for adults of working age and psychiatric intensive care units (PICU).
The inspection was carried out to determine whether the service was providing safe and good care to patients, and to check if the improvements the provider had been told to make after the last inspection had been embedded.
Shortly after the April inspection, the provider decided to close the two child and adolescent mental health wards in the hospital. The decision to close the CAMHS wards was unrelated to the inspection, after which CQC rated the service good overall and outstanding for being caring. It was taken because the provider was experiencing issues recruiting enough nursing and medical staff for the service. The acute wards for adults remain open.
Following the inspection in April, the overall rating for The Priory Ticehurst House remains the same, and is good, and the overall rating for the acute wards for adults of working age and PICU also remains good.
Karen Bennett-Wilson, CQC’s head of hospital inspection for mental health, said:
“I am pleased to say that when we inspected The Priory Ticehurst House, we found it was well-led and that staff were delivering safe care to patients and treating them with compassion and kindness.
“The service had enough doctors and nurses, staff assessed and managed risk well, medicines were managed safely, and staff minimised the use of restrictive practices and followed good practice with regard to safeguarding. Staff developed holistic, recovery-orientated care plans informed by a comprehensive assessment and provided a range of treatments in line with national guidance about best practice.
“However, we did point out some further areas for improvement. We were concerned that staff did not understand their roles and responsibilities under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and observed that some staff were not supporting people who lacked capacity with decisions that were made in their best interests.
“In the adult wards, we also told the provider that they should ensure staff receive regular clinical and managerial supervision. We have asked the provider to send us a report outlining their plans to address these issues. We will follow up to ensure that further improvements are made.”
Full details of the inspection are given in the report published on our website.
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