The Care Quality Commission has found that The Priory Hospital’s West Wing in Roehampton has made improvements to its substance misuse and detoxification service.
CQC inspectors visited The Priory in January 2018 to check on the safety of patients receiving treatment for drug and alcohol use on West Wing. Previously the service was in breach of regulations around substance misuse and detoxification.
The Priory had voluntarily suspended the admission of new patients requiring medically assisted withdrawal care and submitted an action plan to CQC. Patients are now being admitted again.
Inspectors found that:
Doctors now completed a face-to-face assessment of patients prior to admission.
Staff completed comprehensive patient physical health checks on admission - including blood tests and pregnancy tests.
Staff had completed patient drug testing on admission and then randomly on a twice weekly basis.
The service had developed ‘see the adult, see the child’ guidance - to assess safeguarding risks for patients in contact with children.
Nursing staff had completed training on substance misuse.
The service had completed regular emergency scenarios with staff on the ward.
The provider had implemented governance systems to assess, monitor and improve the quality of the service including regular audits, internal compliance reviews, reviewing risk at the clinical governance meeting and quality at the weekly learning outcomes group.
However, CQC also found that the service should continue to make the following improvements:
- The Priory needed to ensure staff understood and applied the new policies and procedures in practice.
- It needed to embed the implementation of the new admission process and monitor staff ability to support patients undergoing the new withdrawal process.
- The provider also needed to embed the implementation of the new governance systems to assess, monitor and improve the quality of the service.
- Ensure learning and improvements are shared across the provider’s other residential detoxification services.
Dr Paul Lelliott, Deputy Chief Inspector (and lead for mental health), said:
“The Priory acted quickly to address the concerns we raised concerning substance misuse and detoxification, voluntarily suspending admissions to The West Wing ward.
“We have been in to inspect again and we have seen the improvements introduced by Priory Healthcare Limited. Patients are now being admitted to the ward once more.
“In November 2017, CQC published a briefing in which it expressed concern about the safety of services that offer residential detoxification for people who are withdrawing from drugs and/or alcohol. We will keep such services under close scrutiny and, from July 2018, will have the power to rate them in the same way that do for other types of health and care service.”
You can read Priory Healthcare Limited reports on our website.
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