The Care Quality Commission has today published the report of its inspection of Lancam Nursing Home, New Barnet, Hertfordshire.
The report sets out CQC’s findings on the service provided by Lancam Nursing Care Limited during an unannounced inspection in January 2015.
Inspectors concluded that the provider was failing to provide care which was safe, effective, caring, responsive or well led. Overall Lancam Nursing Home was rated as Inadequate.
The full report of the latest inspection is available on the CQC website today.
The report identifies a number of areas in which improvements were required, including:
- Staff recruitment checks were not effective at checking for satisfactory evidence of conduct in previous care employment.
- Inspectors were not assured that there were enough staff with sufficient skills and experience at all times, to keep people safe.
- The service was not effective. Some people continued to fail to have health concerns recognised and addressed.
- Staff did not always treat people respectfully. Doors were not always knocked on before gaining permission for entry. One person was rushed to eat their meal which put them at risk of choking.
- One person’s room had a strong smell of sewage but no action had been taken to permanently rectify this or move the person to a vacant room.
- Whilst there were systems of providing staff with supervision, these were not adequate to equip them to meet people’s individual needs consistently.
- Quality assurance and audit systems at the service were not effective at assessing and monitoring the risk of unsafe or inappropriate care and treatment of people. There had not been a whole-service audit since our previous inspection despite our previous concerns and enforcement work.
- There was nothing documented to show call-bell checks took place and we again found that someone did not have access to a call-bell in their room.
- Despite there being records of occasional incidents of behaviours by people that challenged the service, there continued to be no record of auditing incidents so that learning could take place with the aim of minimising the risk of harm to people using the service and staff.
Rebecca Bauers, CQC’s Head of Inspection of Adult Social Care, said:
“We visited this service in October last year where we found that provider was placing people at risk, we visited again in January to check to see if things had changed and although there were some improvements the service remained ineffective.
“It is simply unacceptable that our inspectors again witnessed practices that were putting people at risk, including evidence of poor staffing levels and insufficient action had been taken to address the most significant concerns arising from our last visit.
“Our inspection report sets out the action the provider and the registered manager are required to take to address the concerns we have identified, if action has not secured improvements we will have no alternative but to take further enforcement action.”
Ends
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It is simply unacceptable that our inspectors again witnessed practices that were putting people at risk, including evidence of poor staffing levels and insufficient action had been taken to address the most significant concerns arising from our last visit.
Rebecca Bauers, Head of Inspection of Adult Social Care