The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated The Partnership Healthcare Group Limited in Swan Valley, Northampton inadequate, and placed it in special measures to protect people following their first ever inspection in September.
The Partnership Healthcare Group Limited is a domiciliary care agency providing personal care to people in their own homes. At the time of inspection there were 20 people using the service.
The inspection was prompted in part due to concerns received about the recruitment of staff and lack of communication from the provider. This was CQC’s first inspection of the service.
Following the inspection, the overall rating for the home is inadequate, as well as the areas of safe and well-led. Caring, responsive and effective are rated requires improvement.
The service has been placed in special measures which means it will be kept under close review to make sure people are safe and, if CQC do not propose to cancel the provider's registration, there will be a re-inspection to check for significant improvements.
Craig Howarth, CQC deputy director of operations in the midlands, said:
“When we inspected The Partnership Healthcare Group Limited, it was concerning that people’s needs weren’t being met and they weren’t being supported to manage health conditions. Leaders must urgently address these significant issues to put people’s individual needs at the centre of people’s care plans, and to prevent them from coming to harm.
“People using this service rely on carers visiting their home to meet their basic care needs like food and drink, medications, long term health condition management and personal support like keeping clean. The people using this service should have been able to rely on carers to keep them well in their own homes, but this wasn’t always happening. We found evidence of staff not attending planned care calls which is totally unacceptable and as a result, CQC raised several safeguarding referrals with the local authority to ensure people were being supported appropriately.
“The service clearly wasn’t tailoring care to people who had specific needs due to long term conditions or specific health needs. For example people who used catheters weren’t being monitored properly. This placed them at risk of infections and urinary retention as there was no information to guide staff on the signs and symptoms of a catheter blockage or how to identify signs of infection.
“Similarly, there were no care plans in place for people with diabetes meaning staff didn’t know how to identify or deal with high or low blood sugar levels which could place people at significant risk of deterioration.
“We will continue to monitor the service closely to ensure the necessary improvements are made and keep people safe during this time. If improvements are not made by the time we next inspect, we will not hesitate to take further enforcement action.”
Inspectors found:
- The provider didn’t review and investigate incidents to learn from them, and avoid them happening again
- People weren’t always supported to receive their medicines safely
- Staff didn’t always report potential harm to people, despite having received safeguarding training
- The provider didn’t obtain satisfactory evidence of staff conduct in previous employment to ensure they were suitable for the role
- Not all people were involved in the assessment of their care and support needs
- Not all care plans contained personalised information such as culture, religion, staff gender preference, likes and dislikes, end of life decisions and oral care support.
However:
- People were protected from the risk of infection as staff were following safe infection prevention and control practices
- People and their relatives told us staff sought consent prior to providing care and support
- Staff had received training in nutrition and fluid awareness and explained the support they provided to people
- People's privacy, dignity and independence was respected and promoted.
The report will be published on CQC’s website in the next few days.