Ambulance Station

Ambulance Station is operated by Central Medical Services, East Midlands. The service provides emergency and urgent care and a patient transport service.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of our inspection to ensure everyone we needed to speak with was available. We carried out the inspection on 18 and 26 February 2020.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we ask the same five questions of all services: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs, and well-led?

Throughout the inspection, we took account of what people told us and how the provider understood and complied with the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

The services provided by this service patient transport services with emergency and urgent care transport from events and carrying out 999 calls for NHS trusts. On this inspection we inspected both core services.

Where our findings on patient transport services – for example, management arrangements – also apply to other services, we do not repeat the information but refer the reader to the patient transport core service.

We rated it as Good overall.

We found the following areas of good practice:

• The service had enough staff to care for patients and keep them safe. Staff had training in key skills, understood how to protect patients from abuse, and managed safety well. The service controlled infection risk well. Staff assessed risks to patients, acted on them and kept good care records. They managed medicines well. The service managed safety incidents well and learned lessons from them. Staff collected safety information and used it to improve the service.

• Staff provided good care and treatment and gave them pain relief when they needed it. Managers monitored the effectiveness of the service and made sure staff were competent. Staff worked well together for the benefit of patients, supported them to make decisions about their care, and had access to good information.

• Staff treated patients with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity, took account of their individual needs, and helped them understand their conditions. They provided emotional support to patients, families and carers.

• The service planned care to meet the needs of local people, took account of patients’ individual needs, and made it easy for people to give feedback. People could access the service when they needed it and did not have to wait too long for treatment.

• Leaders ran services well using reliable information systems and supported staff to develop their skills. Staff understood the service’s vision and values, and how to apply them in their work.Staff felt respected, supported and valued. They were focused on the needs of patients receiving care. Staff were clear about their roles and accountabilities. The service engaged well with patients and the community to plan and manage services and all staff were committed to improving services continually.

However, we found the following issues that the service provider needs to improve:

• The service did not comply with Duty of Candour regulation.
• Staff completion of information governance and prevent training was below 70%.
• The safeguarding adults policy did not reference modern slavery.

Following this inspection, we told the provider that it must and should make some improvements, even though a regulation had not been breached, to help the service improve. We also issued the provider with one requirement notice that affected emergency and urgent care. Details are at the end of the report. Although a breach of a regulation normally limits the rating of that key question to requires improvement as this breach relates to one incident, we have over ruled that principle and the rating for safe for emergency and urgent care has therefore been rated as good.

Heidi Smoult

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals (Acute Hospitals South), on behalf of the Chief Inspector of Hospitals