The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated Bromley Healthcare Community Interest Company requires improvement, following an inspection which found reasonable steps were not being taken to ensure patients always received a high-quality service.
CQC inspected the care provider in August and September as part of routine checks to assess whether people receive standards of care to which they have a right to expect.
Bromley Healthcare operates in the London boroughs of Bromley, Bexley, Greenwich and Lewisham.
It provides NHS-funded community health services for children, young people and adults – including district nursing, health visiting, specialist community children’s nursing, an inpatient rehabilitation service, sexual health services, dietetics, dentistry and a range of specialist services for adults. It provides different services in each borough where it operates.
CQC inspected three of its core services during the latest inspection: community health services for adults; community health services for inpatients; and community health services for children, young people and families.
Following the inspection, CQC rated Bromley Healthcare requires improvement overall as well as for being safe, effective, responsive to people’s needs and well-led. It rated it good for being caring.
Helen Rawlings, CQC head of hospital inspection, said:
“Our inspection of Bromley Healthcare found a stable leadership team with some teams providing high-quality care. However, this high quality was not consistently matched in all areas – such as district nursing and health visiting.
“This is partly because some performance information was not being captured or used to measure how well services met people’s needs.
“Managers should use this information to identify and address gaps in accessibility, quality and safety.
“This situation was worsened because there was not a well-developed strategy to understand people’s experiences of care. Had a mechanism to gather patient feedback been embedded, people’s insights could have been used to drive improvement.
“However, we did find good collaboration with other healthcare providers to support people’s needs.
“We also found safety incidents, safeguarding concerns and complaints were appropriately actioned.
“Bromley Healthcare’s leaders know where improvements must be made and we will continue to monitor the healthcare provider, including through future inspections, to determine whether the issues we identified are addressed.”
CQC’s inspection of Bromley Healthcare Community Interest Company found there were not adequate processes to ensure the quality and safety of patient care. This meant there was a risk that problems would not be identified quickly.
Inspectors also found information about how well services performed was not fully utilised to drive improvement.
Issues included:
- Some care plans and medicine records lacked enough detail to ensure people’s needs were met and their safety ensured
- Insufficient recording and oversight of pressure ulcer management in inpatient services
- The need to fully explore the staff skill mix in health visiting teams to enable effective delivery of the mandated Healthy Child Programme.
However, Bromley Healthcare’s leaders were visible and accessible to their workforce – which exceeds 1,000 employees.
They also used their commercial skills to effectively manage the organisation’s finances, which supported its ability to deliver NHS-funded patient care.
Inspectors also welcomed Bromley Healthcare’s contribution to the wider healthcare system’s pandemic response and acknowledged its ability to step in and take over a local failing service at very short notice.
Full details of the inspection are given in the report published on our website.
For enquiries about this press release please email regional.engagement@cqc.org.uk.
Journalists wishing to speak to the press office outside of office hours can find out how to contact the team here (Please note: the duty press officer is unable to advise members of the public on health or social care matters).
For general enquiries, please call 03000 61 61 61.