Archived: The Priory Hospital Widnes

Feedback was shared with senior hospital managers of the Priory Group including their regional operations director on conclusion of our visit. We raised serious concerns relating to the practice and management of seclusion at the hospital during day one and advised that our concerns would be referred to Halton social services and the NHS commissioners.

During the course of the visit powers were used under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 to obtain documentary evidence to support the inspection.

We encouraged the patients we met to participate in the visit and we met six patients who received support from the service.

We had mixed comments and opinions from patients about their stay at the hospital, such as;

One patient told us they had not been involved in looking at their care plan and had not been involved in giving their opinion about their care and placement at the Priory.

Some patients told us they didn't have much to do and limited access for activities, some said that trips out were sometimes cancelled. The kitchen on Beech unit had been changed into a laundry and they were unable to do cooking on the ward.

One patient said she spent her day playing on her computer game and watching television.

Another patient felt there were insufficient staff to talk to because they were involved in carrying out other activities such as monitoring patients or involved in seclusion.

One patient was very positive about staff and their rehabilitation. They were looking forward to going home later in the day.

One patient told us they were restricted in when they could have a cigarette and had not received any information about certain routines and practices.

Patients told us they did not always know why they were in hospital or in seclusion.

One patient had asked for a social worker but did not know when they would get to see one.

We also contacted the NHS specialist commissioners for the north west before our visit in March who shared some concerns in standards at the service that needed improvement.

We received an anonymous concern regarding services at the hospital prior to our unannounced visit on day one and due to the nature of the allegations we referred them to Halton social services and the NHS North West commissioners.

We conducted the visit with a Mental Health Act Commissioner who has specific responsibilities to ensure that the service is compliant with the Mental Health Act. Compliance with this is subject to a separate report between the Commissioner and the service.

On the day of the visit, the Regional manager of the Service provided us with an audit of the service that had been conducted prior to our visit. As the Priory Group have recently acquired this Hospital, they implement such an audit as part of the acquisition process and were very open regarding its content. The audit was linked to each of the essential standards of quality and safety that is used to examine compliance. The audit indicated that generally the service was non compliant with essential standards and these are outlined in this report.