Archived: Black Hangar Studios

Black Hangar is operated by Out of Hours Medics Ltd. The service provides event cover and patient transport services. Black Hangar was not commissioned by NHS organisations to deliver services, but was sub-contracted to carry out patient transfer work by a company that was commissioned by NHS organisations. The general public were also able to book patient transfers, although at the time of the inspection there were no examples where this had been the case.

We inspected the patient transfer service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out a short notice announced inspection on 24 October 2018. We had not carried out any inspections of the service previously.

The service had two emergency ambulance vehicles available for patient transfers.

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.

We found the following issues that the service needs to improve:

• There was no process or evidence that staff working for the service had completed mandatory training and updates required for their roles.
• Staff had not completed the required levels of safeguarding training for adults and children.
• There were no cleaning records of the ambulance completed and we found evidence of blood contaminated equipment.
• Hand hygiene and infection prevention audits were not completed.
• Emergency equipment was not ready for use, despite having a green tag that meant it had been checked and prepared.
• Vehicle checks were not recorded and there was no assurance that staff completed vehicle checks before patient transport journeys.
• Full and empty medical gas cylinders were stored together with no clear separation.
• The service did not make sure staff were competent for their role.
• The service did not have systems to supervise staff who worked for the service to give assurance about the quality of care staff delivered to patients.
• The service did not audit staff compliance with national guidelines in the delivery of care and treatment.
• The registered manager did not have the necessary range of skills, knowledge and experience to effectively manage and develop the service.
• There were no recorded governance meetings.
• There was limited evidence of clear vision and strategy to develop the service.
• The process for managing risks was not effective. Risks were not correctly identified and the registered manager was not aware of the serious risks we identified during the inspection.
• There was an absence of audits and there were no processes for the service to gain assurance of the delivery of high quality care.
• Staff development was not given sufficient priority and appraisals did not take place.
• There was some flexibility to take account of individual needs as they arose but the service did not meet the needs of all the people who used it. For example, staff did not have access to a translation service

However, we found the following areas of good practice:

• Policies we reviewed were in date.

Following this inspection, we told the service that it must take some actions to comply with the regulations.

The service was rated as inadequate overall and was urgently suspended.

Following this inspection we have used our enforcement powers to suspend the registration of Out of Hours Medics Ltd provider from 29 October 2018 to protect the safety and welfare of patients. The suspension will continue until 21 January 2019. We revisited this location on the 31 January 2019 and found that the service was no longer operating from this address.

Further details are shown in the table at the end of this report

Nigel Acheson,

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