There have been improvements to the care provided to patients at Broadmoor Hospital - the Care Quality Commission has found.
CQC inspected the high security psychiatric hospital in Berkshire in July 2017 after inspectors previously found breaches in the care provided at Broadmoor by West London Mental Health NHS Trust.
CQC had issued a Warning Notice requiring the trust to improve patient access to therapeutic activities especially for patients who were confined to their rooms at night. This notice has now been removed after inspectors found that the hospital had improved the amount of activities offered to patients each week. However, further work was needed to embed these changes and to ensure the levels of activities were correctly recorded.
The hospital had improved the recruitment strategy and this was resulting in additional staff being recruited. The focus was not only on recruitment but also looking at ways to improve retention rates for staff at the hospital.
Reported incidents relating to staff shortages had decreased since CQC’s previous inspection in November 2016. The proportion of shifts which had the appropriate number of nursing staff allocated had increased considerably.
Paul Lelliott, CQC’s Deputy Chief Inspector (Mental Health) said:
“Most patients we spoke with were positive about the support provided in the hospital and some told us that there had been an improvement in access to activities since our previous inspection in November 2016."
“The leadership team at Broadmoor and in the trust are committed to making further improvements and were closely monitoring the progress being made. They recognised the areas where further work was needed."
“While there had been considerable work undertaken to recruit additional nurses in the hospital, there were still significant vacancies. We recognise that it is challenging for the trust to recruit nurses to work at Broadmoor, but having permanent staff is important in delivering high quality care.”
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