'Increased risk that people could be harmed' - Formby care home served warning notice following CQC inspection
A care home in Formby has been served a warning notice following a Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection which found parts of the service were not safe and presented an ‘increased risk that people could be harmed’.
Maryland Care Home (MCH) on School Lane in Formby, is a facility without nursing and provides accommodation and personal care for up to 30 people. At the time of the inspection, 23 people were living at the home.
CQC inspectors visited MCH between August 4 and September 10, and examined 33 quality statements from the key questions ‘safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led’; issuing a ‘requires improvement’ rating to every area.
Inspectors said MCH was also in breach of regulations associated with the effective management of people’s safety, their treatment and protocols around good governance. The report stated: “Some aspects of the service were not always safe and there was limited assurance about safety. There was an increased risk that people could be harmed.”
Elaborating on the safety issues in its overview section, the inspectors wrote: “People were not always provided with safe care and treatment. Risks to people were not consistently identified and monitored. People’s care plans were not always completed and some lacked important information about people’s health care and support needs.
“Important health and safety checks, including fire safety checks, had not been carried out, meaning people were at risk from factors within the environment. Safety events were not always analysed, meaning action taken to prevent further occurrences could be missed.”
The report continued: “Medicines were not managed or administered safely. We could not be assured people received their prescribed medicines at the right time and in the right way as records were incomplete and lacked important information.”
In the section titled ‘Medicines optimisation’, the report added: “For one person who was prescribed pain killers, we saw how they were being given this medicine before the minimum time between doses had passed, meaning the person was at risk of being overdosed.
“We checked a sample of people’s medication administration records (MARs) and found some people’s were inaccurate and their stock of medication did not balance with what had been administered. This indicated people may not have received the medication they required.
“For people with medicines recorded on handwritten MARs, important details such as the quantity of tablets which had been received into the home was not recorded.”
This was a breach of Regulation 12 as there was no suitable or reliable system in place to ensure medicines were managed safely. In the section detailing the results of the ‘Caring’ assessment, inspectors wrote: “Although people felt well-supported, cared for and treated with dignity and respect, people’s records did not always best evidence this.
“Although we were assured the provider treated people with kindness, empathy and compassion, and respected their privacy and dignity and staff treated colleagues from other organisations with kindness and respect, the provider’s failure to detect and manage risks to people did not demonstrate a sufficiently caring attitude.
“The provider’s failure to ensure people were involved in the formulation of their care plans, compromised people’s dignity. As important information about people was not always recorded and maintained, there was a risk people may not have felt valued and respected.
“However, throughout the day, we saw staff supporting people’s needs in a prompt, warm manner. It was obvious people felt comfortable in the company of staff and staff knew people well. Staff maintained people’s dignity and people looked well dressed and cared for.
“People’s relatives were made welcome and visited without any restrictions. Relatives told us, “I am always made to feel welcome, and I can visit day and night” and “Every other day I come in and the staff are so welcoming, lovely staff here. People and their relatives were positive about the staff at the home and the care and support they received.”
The CQC confirmed MCH was served with a warning notice on September 4 for failing to meet the regulations related to the safe management of medicines. Maryland Care Home was contacted for comment.