Sturdee Community Hospital

Updated 14 February 2024

Sturdee Hospital is an independent hospital and is part of the InMind Healthcare Group. Sturdee Community Hospital provides assessment, care and ongoing treatment facilities including high dependency rehabilitation. The facilities are for female service users aged over 18 years who may be subject to an appropriate section of the Mental Health Act 1983 or within services voluntarily.

Although Sturdee Hospital is an independent hospital registered with the CQC as a mixed sex service, 35 bed, separated into small self-contained units for rehabilitation purposes. The service is currently operating as an all-female service with 24 beds available for use. All bedrooms are single en-suite bedrooms with shower facilities.

Sturdee Community Hospital has been registered with CQC since April 2011. The hospital has a nominated individual as required. At the time of inspection, there was no registered manager in place and the provider had notified CQC of this through the statutory notification process. The hospital director had recently left the service and the deputy hospital director was in an acting role. The director of services was due to register as the registered manager for the hospital.

Sturdee Community Hospital is registered to provide the following regulated activities:

• Assessment or medical treatment for persons detained under the Mental Health Act 1983.
• Treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

The last comprehensive inspection of this location was on 9 August 2022 to assess the work the service had undertaken as a result of enforcement issued in November 2021 following a focussed inspection of safe and well-led. The location was rated as requires improvement overall with requires improvement in safe and well-led and good in effective, caring and responsive.

We undertook an unannounced focussed inspection based on some recent information of concern. We inspected the following key questions:

Are services safe?

Are services well-led?

We visited all 3 wards:

• Foxton ward is 7 bed admissions ward providing high dependency rehabilitation
• Rutland ward is a 15 bed ward providing high dependency rehabilitation
• Aylestone ward is a 9 bed ward containing independent flats providing open rehabilitation.

What people who use the service say

We spoke to 9 patients across all 3 wards. Patients told us that they did not feel as though the service provided was rehabilitation. Some patients told us that they did not always feel safe. They told us that at times it was difficult to communicate with staff as there were a high percentage of staff members who did not speak English as a first language. Some patients who had primary or secondary diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) told us that the environment was not conducive to meet their needs. One patient found communication difficult at times. Some patients told us that they did not have access to or know what a personal alarm was. Patients spoke highly of the consultant and the occupational therapy team.

Updated 14 February 2024

Our rating of the service stayed the same. We rated it as requires improvement because:

• Medicines were not always safely managed.
• Patients did not always have regular one-to-one sessions with their named nurse.
• Staff did not always assess risk well.
• Patients and some staff raised concerns about the difficulty in communication at times due to a number of staff who do not speak English as a first language.
• Information systems were not always effective due to paper based systems which staff found difficult to navigate.
• Governance processes did not always work effectively to ensure good oversight of quality and performance data and that ward procedures ran smoothly. The processes in place did not always identify gaps in recording and whether care plans, risk assessments and risk management plans were in place or up to date.
• Audits in place did not always work effectively to monitor the quality and safety of care provided or ensure improvements were made where necessary.

However:

• Staff followed good practice to safeguard patients. Staff were able to recognise and report abuse appropriately.
• Staff knew what incidents to report, how to report them and they were appropriately recorded on the patient information system.
• Staff minimised the use of restrictive practices. Staff undertook patient observations and had good knowledge of individual patient risks.
• Staff were up to date with their mandatory training.
• Staff felt as though they were respected, valued and supported.

Following this inspection, we issued the service with a warning notice served under Section 29 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008. We found that the service was failing to comply with Regulation 17 Good governance.

We found the service had failed to operate effective systems or processes to ensure the compliance with the requirements of regulation 17. We found the service was not maintaining accurate, complete or contemporaneous records. We found issues with the governance of medicines and we found environmental issues that had been identified as previous issues had not been acted on.

Updated 14 February 2024