The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated a Burton upon Trent clinical homecare service good, following an inspection which found improved patient safety.
Healthcare at Home, which is being rebranded as Sciensus, was previously rated inadequate by CQC and placed in special measures following an inspection last year. The previous report raised several serious issues, including missed medicine deliveries which meant some patients experienced avoidable harm requiring hospital treatment.
The company provides care and treatment to people with chronic conditions – including Crohn's disease, haemophilia and rheumatoid arthritis – and delivers over 200,000 prescriptions to people across the UK. This is funded by the NHS, pharmaceutical companies or privately following referral by healthcare professionals.
CQC inspected the service in July and August 2021 to determine whether the service had addressed concerns it raised following last year’s inspection.
The latest inspection found that while the service still has work to do, people were benefiting from better outcomes because of improvements it had made.
Following the latest inspection, the service is rated good overall, and for being responsive to people’s needs and well led. It is also rated requires improvement for being safe, which represents progress on its previous inadequate rating for this domain.
Due to this improvement, the service has exited special measures.
Jenny Wilkes, CQC head of inspection for mental health and community health services, said:
“I welcome the improvement Healthcare at Home has made because it has led to patients receiving safer care.
“The service had better staffing arrangements, compared to what we saw on our previous inspection, so people could contact it when they needed to. Both staff and patients were also more empowered to raise concerns.
“It had also improved its management of medicine deliveries to prevent backlogs, and it had implemented more robust checks to ensure people’s safety when a medicine delivery failed.
“Underpinning this was better leadership with good oversight of the service. This was supported by managers who gathered and used information to find solutions to problems which previously put people at risk of avoidable harm.
“If this approach is continued, the service will sustain its progress.
“However, it must further build on its work to ensure it captures all information from safety incidents, so problems are identified, and solutions are embedded. It must also ensure it is consistent in its approach to responding to people’s allergies.
“We continue to monitor the service and will take action if we are not assured people are receiving care meeting quality and safety standards that they have a right to expect.”
Full details of the inspection are given in the report published on our website.
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