Archived: BMI St Edmunds Hospital

Anglian Medical Musculoskeletal is operated by Anglian Medical Musculoskeletal. The service is a stand-alone, purpose built densitometry facility and provides a bone densitometry service to the adult population of West Suffolk and surrounding areas.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out the announced part of the inspection on 6 November 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? Where we have a legal duty to do so we rate services’ performance against each key question as outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate.

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 by this provider was dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scanning.

Services we rate

We rated this service as good overall. We rated it as good because:

• All staff had received safeguarding training on how to recognise and report abuse and they knew how to apply it.

• The service had suitable premises and equipment and looked after them well.

• The service had staff with the right qualifications, skills, training and experience to keep people safe and to provide the right care and treatment.

• Staff recognised incidents and reported them appropriately. Managers investigated incidents and shared lessons learnt with staff.

• The provider followed an audit programme and audited practice against guidelines.

• Staff were competent for their roles. Staff had appraisals and were provided with training and support.

• Staff understood how and when to assess whether a patient had the capacity to make decisions about their care. They followed the providers policy and procedures when a patient could not give consent.

• We observed staff treating patients with kindness, dignity and respect.

• Staff offered emotional support to patients. They talked to the patient throughout the scan and checked regularly that the patient was ok.

• The service was planned and managed in line with the commissioning agreement in place.

• The service took account of patients’ individual needs.

• The provider treated concerns and complaints seriously, investigated them and learned lessons from the results, and shared these with all staff.

• The service manager promoted a positive culture that supported and valued staff, creating a sense of common purpose based on shared values.

However, we also found:

• Scales used to weigh patients were not included in the equipment service schedule and had not been calibrated.

• The technician kept the door to the scanning room locked with a key whilst scanning patients to prevent people from accessing the room during scanning. However, this meant that, in case of emergency, access to the room was restricted.

• Although electronic copies of policies were in date and version controlled, we found two hard copies of policies that had not been updated.

• The service did not have a formal vision or strategy.

Following this inspection, we told the provider that it should make improvements, even though a regulation had not been breached, to help the service improve.

Amanda Stanford

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals