Archived: Jigsaw Medical-Hampshire Resource Centre

Jigsaw Medical – Hampshire Resource Centre, based in Basingstoke, is an ambulance service providing emergency and urgent care services.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out the announced part of the inspection on 29 August 2018.

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 main service provided was emergency and urgent care, therefore we have reported findings in the emergency and urgent care core service.

We found the following areas of good practice:

• The provider had strong leadership with a clear focus on high quality provision and care.
• We found all vehicles were in good condition and there was a comprehensive system to ensure they were fit for purpose.
• There was an effective compliance process to ensure operational staff had completed induction and mandatory training before commencing employment and remained competent during the time they continued to work for the provider.
• There were arrangements for escalating issues with contracting trusts. A contract manager was identified within the commissioning trust and monthly contract meetings took place to monitor performance and provide feedback regarding incidents and referrals.
• Mental Capacity Act 2005 training compliance was 100% for operational staff at the time of our inspection.
• Staff had access to practitioners trained in Trauma Risk Management (TRiM) to support personnel following traumatic events. TRiM is a peer delivered psychological support system designed to allow organisations to proactively support personnel following traumatic events.

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

• The provider did not have oversight of all incidents and safeguarding situations operational staff. They relied on the commissioning trust to identify any immediate learning by telephone or during monthly contract meetings. The provider did not have a complete record of all incidents or safeguarding referrals reported.
• Medicine storage temperatures were not effectively monitored in store rooms and on vehicles.
• Not all staff had received an appraisal. Documentation we reviewed did not indicate any standards and although there was a scoring system for individuals, there was no indication of what the scores meant.
• Patient feedback forms were not available on all vehicles we inspected. Staff were not always involved in complaints from the commissioning trust and did not always receive feedback on complaint outcomes.

Following this inspection, we told the provider that it must take some actions to comply with the regulations and that it should make other improvements, even though a regulation had not been breached, to help the service improve.

Dr Nigel Acheson

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals (London and South), on behalf of the Chief Inspector of Hospitals.