Willows Green Hospital in Whalley Range, Manchester has been rated inadequate for a second time following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in March.
CQC carried out an unannounced inspection to follow up on concerns found at the previous inspection last August, when the hospital was rated inadequate overall and for being safe, caring and well led. As a result, the provider was issued a warning notice requiring them to make improvements.
This latest inspection was also carried out in response to safety concerns that had been raised about the care and treatment of people using the service.
Willows Green Hospital opened in March 2022 and provides long term rehabilitation care and treatment. The hospital has four wards, however only one ward was open at the time of the inspection, caring for two people.
As well as the overall hospital rating remaining inadequate, it also remains inadequate for being safe and well-led. Caring has improved from inadequate to requires improvement. Effective is now rated inadequate and responsive is rated good, these were previously unrated.
Alison Chilton, CQC deputy director of operations in the north, said:
“When we inspected Willows Green Hospital, we found standards of care were still well below those people have a right to expect as the provider had failed to create a stable management team.
“We saw that this service has had four managers in less than a year resulting in no continuity of improvement since our last inspection. We saw that even when there was a manager, they weren’t always doing everything they could to keep people safe, for example allowing someone under investigation for a safeguarding allegation to carry out someone’s observations.
“Also, the service didn’t have enough appropriately skilled staff to meet people’s needs and keep them safe. There was only one full time nurse employed, and the service was overly reliant on bank and agency staff who didn’t understand people’s individual needs, especially at weekends and evenings.
"What we found at Willows Green Hospital is unacceptable and following the inspection we fed back to the provider, who have submitted an action plan showing what urgent improvements need to be addressed.
“We will continue to monitor the service closely and carry out a further inspection, to ensure the necessary improvements are made to keep people safe and free from harm. If we are not assured people are receiving safe care, we will not hesitate to take further enforcement action.”
Inspectors found:
- The service was not well-led, and processes did not ensure incidents were not repeated. Incidents were not immediately reported to safeguarding or CQC
- Staff did not assess and regularly review people’s risks. Risk records were not updated after incidents. Managers did not complete investigations into incidents in a timely manner
- Governance processes did not identify that care plans and risk assessments were not up to date and were inaccurate
- The service did not provide trained staff to care, support and meet people’s needs. Occupational therapy staff did not have systems in place to ensure people did not hide disallowed items after sessions
- Managerial tasks were not being completed in a timely way.
However:
- After the last inspection an extra member of staff had been added to the roster to allow staff to have a break from observations every two hours.