Archived: Priority One Medical Services

Updated 5 August 2021

Priority One Medical Services Ltd is an independent ambulance service that mainly provides patient transport services across the West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester regions.

The service is also registered to provide emergency and urgent care ambulance services, including the transport of patients from an event to hospital. This is only a small part of overall activities.

The main service provided by Priority One Medical Services Ltd is patient transport services. The

The service is registered to provide the following regulated activities:

• Transport services, triage and medical advice provided remotely
• Treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

The service has a manager registered with CQC. We have not previously inspected this service.

Since January 2021, the service has been operating from Suite 12A, Block B, 23 Goodlass Road, Liverpool, L24 9HJ. This location has not been registered with the Care Quality Commission. The service had applied to register this location in January 2021; however the Commission issued notice of decision to refuse the application in April 2021.

We carried out a focussed responsive inspection at the provider’s premises in 23 Goodlass Road, Liverpool on 25 May 2021 because of concerns around governance processes identified from previous engagement with provider and concerns raised due to the Commission’s notice of decision to refuse the provider’s application to register a new location in April 2021.

We inspected patient transport services and specific key lines of enquiry for safe, effective, responsive and well-led. We did not inspect caring as part of this inspection. We did not rate the service as part of this inspection.

The main activity provided by the services was patient transport services. The service also provided events cover and emergency and urgent care services. We did not inspect this because the service had not undertaken any emergency and urgent care ambulance services or transported patients to hospital emergency department from an event during the past 12 months.

Updated 5 August 2021

We did not rate the service because this was a focussed responsive inspection.

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

• Leaders did not operate effective governance processes, Whilst staff were clear about their roles and accountabilities, they did not have regular opportunities to meet, discuss and learn from the performance of the service. Policies and procedures were not always up to date or reflective of staff practice.
• Leaders did not have systems to manage risk, issues and performance effectively. Staff did not identify and escalate all relevant risks and issues or identify actions to reduce their impact. The service did not have effective systems in place for compliance monitoring and audit of key processes, such as medicines management and infection prevention and control.
• Staff did not have a formal inclusion or exclusion criteria or complete and update risk assessments for each patient in order to remove or minimise risks.
• Staff had not undertaken suitable and detailed assessments of the facilities and premises to ensure they were safe.
• The service did not have effective systems to manage infection prevention and control risks in relation to the handling and disposal of waste water.
• Staff mandatory training in medicines management and manual handling was not up to date. The service did not have a formal process to define the training requirements for all staff.
• Whilst managers assessed staff’s work performance and competencies, they did not routinely hold formal supervision or appraisal meetings with them to provide support and development.
• Whilst leaders had the skills and abilities to run the service, we were not assured they managed the priorities and issues the service faced effectively.

However:

• 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 kept good care records. The service managed safety incidents well and learned lessons from them.
• Managers made sure staff were competent. People could access the service when they needed it and did not have to wait too long for treatment.

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. We also imposed conditions against the provider’s registration on 10 June 2021 because we identified significant concerns that posed a potential risk of harm to patients.

Updated 5 August 2021

The main activity provided by the services was patient transport services. The service also provided events cover and emergency and urgent care services. We did not inspect this because the service had not undertaken any emergency and urgent care ambulance services or transported patients to hospital emergency department from an event during the past 12 months.