Archived: Essex Ambulance Service Limited

We rated Patient Transport Services and Emergency and Urgent Care as inadequate.

Following our inspection, we issued a notice of decision under Section 31 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to impose conditions on the registration in respect of the regulated activity Treatment of disease, disorder, or injury. We took this urgent action as we believed a person would or may be exposed to the risk of harm if we did not do so.

We told the provider they must take some actions to manage the regulated activity in a way which complied with their conditions of registration.

We will reinspect the service to check that improvements have been made. We will produce another report of that inspection and include an update of our actions.

For details of the individual services, see the service sections of this report.

This is the first time we have rated this service. We rated it as inadequate because:
• The service did not have effective medicines management or legal mechanisms in place for medicines and medical gases management.
• The service did not manage staff effectively to ensure they were trained and managed. The service did not manage safety and safeguarding incidents well and did not learn lessons from them. The service did not manage infection control risk and clinical waste well.
• The service did not have effective and robust governance systems and processes. The service did not monitor the quality of the service. The service did not have an effective risk management process in place. The service did not monitor and improve the quality and safety of services provided.

However:
• Vehicles were visibly clean and well maintained.
• Staff worked together for the benefit of patients.
• Staff felt supported and valued.