Updated 7 October 2022
Medway Community Healthcare is a community interest company (CIC) and provider of NHS funded adult and children’s community healthcare in Medway and Swale. Their services include community health services for adults, children and young people, a care home and hospice services, adult inpatient services, specialist dental and urgent care. Medway Community Healthcare (MCH) was established in 2011 and is a not-for-profit social enterprise committed to serving its communities and funded by the NHS and local authorities. MCH employs over 1300 staff. All staff have the option to become shareholders and any surplus money is re-invested back into the community.
Services span across all ages from birth to end of life and range from preventative and pro-active support to keep people as well and independent as possible through to complex care and support in individuals’ own homes to prevent admission to hospital or to support people following discharge. MCH provides 40 different services across 31 different locations as well as in individual’s homes and in schools.
MCH provide the following core services:
- Community health services for adults
- Community health inpatient services
- Community health services for children, young people and families
- Urgent care services
- Community dental services
- Hospice services
- Care home
MCH are registered for the following regulated activities:
- Diagnostic and screening procedures
- Family planning
- Maternity and midwifery services
- Nursing care
- Personal care
- Surgical procedures
- Transport services, triage and medical advice provided remotely
- Treatment of disease, disorder or injury
- Accommodation for persons who require nursing or personal care
We carried out inspections of four core services provided by Medway Community Healthcare C.I.C. followed by a well led inspection.
We inspected the community health services for adults, community health services for children, young people and families and community health services for inpatients core services. We also inspected the community dental service, and the findings are included in this report, however we do not rate this core service.
The community health services for adults and the community health services for children and young people were last inspected in March 2017 and both had a rating of good. The urgent care core service was inspected separately in February 2022 as part of an inspection of the urgent care pathway in Kent and Medway and was rated requires improvement.
We did not inspect the Wisdom Hospice or Darland House care home. The Wisdom Hospice was inspected in August 2021 and is rated Good. Darland House care home was inspected in February 2021 and has a rating of good.
This was the first time we had undertaken a well led inspection of this provider.
Although Medway Community Healthcare is not an NHS trust, the word trust is used erroneously in several places in the report as the word cannot be removed from the standardised inspection report template.
We rated Medway Community Healthcare as good because:
- We rated safe as requires improvement, responsive as good, caring as good, and effective as good. We rated well-led for Medway Community Healthcare as good.
- We rated three of the four MCH core services we inspected as good. We do not rate community dental services. In rating the trust overall, we included the existing ratings of the three previously inspected services.
- The non-executive directors provided high quality, effective leadership and delivered appropriate challenge to the senior executives. They all had experience as senior leaders in a range of organisations and brought skills from other sectors including NHS acute care, health organisation directorships, social care, education and local government.
- The board was well supported by five sub-board committees which met every six weeks: audit and risk committee, integrated quality and performance committee, remuneration committee, finance committee and people committee. Each sub-committee was chaired by a non-executive director and also had an executive lead.
- The MCH senior leadership team demonstrated a high level of awareness of the priorities and challenges facing the organisation and the local health environment, and how they could address these and influence change in the system. The senior leaders had demonstrated an ability to adapt at a fast-changing pace during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The organisation had a clear vision and a set of values which staff understood. These were underpinned by a set of clear strategic priorities running from 2019-2025 and progress was regularly reviewed. Leaders were well sighted on the ambition of the strategy and there was a focus on aligning the strategy with both local priorities in the Medway and Swale primary care networks and within the emerging Kent and Medway integrated care system.
- Staff described an open, transparent and supportive culture that centred on what was best for patients and the wider healthcare system. Staff across the organisation worked hand in hand with partners working in the wider healthcare system, with other providers and with external agencies including the voluntary sector.
- The provider’s governance system effectively provided assurance and helped keep patients safe. It helped the organisation deliver its key transformation programmes and priorities outlined in the annual business plan.
- During the core services inspections we saw that staff treated people with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity and understood people’s individual needs. Services were inclusive, took account of patients’ preferences and their individual needs. People had their communication needs met and information was shared in a way that could be understood.
- The provider was a research active organisation and had a research team of 2.4 full time staff and a research strategy. We saw that awareness of research, and its value to staff and patients, was embedded in the operational teams during the core services inspection. Research was part of the organisational culture and research activities were beyond what could be expected in an organisation of this size.
However:
- The provider needed to strengthen its work on Equality, Diversity and Human Rights (EDHR). The provider had produced a Staff Equalities Action Plan in 2021 and had an up to date Workforce Racial Equality Standard (WRES) report. It was clear that the experience of staff with disability, black and minority ethnic staff and the gender pay gap was being considered by the organisation. However, the responses in relation to targeting actions and delivering improvements were not fully formed in any substantial detail across all the groups with protected characteristics.
- Whilst the role and remit of the elected members forum (EMF) was well described, it was not evident from the inspection that the forum was playing the central role envisaged in conveying the views of the shareholders to the board and playing an active part in the development of the organisation’s strategy and governance.
- The scale of the organisation meant that succession planning and ensuring that skilled leaders were being developed presented a risk as the departure of key people could have a larger impact on service delivery. Senior leaders recognised that succession planning was an issue that presented a challenge to the organisation.
- Within the community adults core service the process around maintaining and reviewing patient risk assessments needed improving. The provider also needed to strengthen the palliative care pathway so that staff could effectively escalate the needs of deteriorating patients and ensure communication pathways were effective at these times.
- Within the community inpatients core service we told the provider that it must deploy the right number of staff with the right skills on every shift. The provider also needed to ensure that equipment needed to care for patients is available, fit for purpose and stored appropriately.
How we carried out the inspection
To fully understand the experience of people who use services, we always ask the following five questions of every service and provider:
• Is it safe?
• Is it effective?
• Is it caring?
• Is it responsive to people’s needs?
• Is it well-led?
Before the inspection visit, we reviewed information that we held about the services and reviewed a range of information. During the inspection visit to Medway Community Healthcare services, the inspection team:
Community Health Services for adults
- visited two Medway Community Healthcare CIC bases and three satellite clinic locations
- spoke with 16 senior leaders including heads of service, operational and clinical leads
- spoke with 46 other members of staff including advanced practitioner physiotherapists, physio assistants, dieticians, speech and language therapists, podiatrists, phlebotomists, registered nurses, nursing assistants, tissue viability nurses, occupational therapists, an induction facilitator and administrative staff
- spoke with 19 patients and families who were using services or their carers/relatives
- reviewed 18 patient care and treatment records
- observed three shift handover meetings for community nursing teams
- observed five schedules of care in patients’ homes
- observed staff providing care to patients in clinic settings
- held six focus groups to capture staff who were unavailable on the days of the inspection
- looked at a range of policies, procedures and other documents related to the running of the services.
Community health services for children, young people and families
- visited the main base of the service and two other locations to observe clinics and reviews
- looked at the quality of the service environment
- observed a number of clinics, assessments and reviews, such as well-baby clinics, developmental reviews, health and continence assessments
- observed three home visits
- observed a virtual multidisciplinary team meeting
- observed a virtual meeting between staff members and a special educational needs coordinator
- spoke with 25 parents who were using the service; we spoke to 18 of these parents remotely following the inspection
- spoke with five team managers, two medical staff and 17 other staff including nurses, health visitors, admin staff and therapy staff
- we ran three focus groups virtually for additional staff to join and give feedback on the service
- looked at 18 patient records
- reviewed a range of documents relating to the running of the service
- looked at medicines management.
Community health inpatient services
- visited Amherst Court, Britannia and Endeavour wards on 17 May
- visited Harmony House on 28 May. This visit was delayed due to COVID-19 within the inspection team
- toured all the wards and had an introduction by staff
- observed clinic rooms and medical equipment
- attended a MDT meeting
- spoke with sixteen patients and two relatives face to face
- spoke with 16 staff face to face and six more via an online focus group, and four senior leaders
- looked at seven patient care records and prescription charts
- observed care in communal areas and therapy groups
- looked at charts recording food and hydration intake for eight patients
- looked at records including complaint records and incident reports, workforce data and training information
Community dental services
- toured the unit at Lordswood Healthy living centre
- looked at systems and processes such as observation of the decontamination process
- spoke with four members of staff, 1 dentist, two nurses and the receptionist
- looked at maintenance documents and schedules for the decontamination and radiography equipment
- looked at policies, recruitment processes, complaints, risk policies, and safeguarding
- checked that clinical staff had a current registration with the general dental council and were up to date with their mandatory continuing professional development
- checked the processes, equipment maintenance, training of staff and medicines management with regard to the provision of inhalation sedation
- looked at auditing processes for infection prevention and control, radiographic image quality, disability access, patient records, appointment waiting times and antimicrobial prescribing
- looked at the process for consent, how capacity assessments were carried out and what these entailed.
The well led inspection team comprised one executive reviewer who was an executive of an NHS community health provider, two specialist advisors with professional experience in board-level governance, one CQC head of hospital inspection, one CQC inspection manager and two CQC inspectors.
You can find further information about how we carry out our inspections on our website: www.cqc.org.uk/what-we-do/how-we-do-our-job/what-we-do-inspection.