The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has put Long Meadow Care Home in Ripon, North Yorkshire, into special measures to protect people living at the service after rating them as Inadequate after an unannounced inspection in April this year.
We have told the service that they must make improvements to protect the safety and welfare of residents.
Under CQC’s new programme of inspections, all adult social care services are being given a rating to help people choose care. We ask five questions, are services; safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led. Overall, Long Meadow Care home has been rated as Inadequate.
Long Meadow Care Home is registered to provide residential and nursing care for up to 47 older people some of whom are living with a dementia. At the time of this inspection 29 people were living at the service. Since the inspection the service has ceased to provide nursing care and all residents with nursing needs have been relocated.
The full report from the inspection can be found here on our website: http://www.cqc.org.uk/sites/default/files/new_reports/INS2-2569366661.pdf
The report identified a number of areas in which the provider was not meeting required standards, including:
The provider had failed to ensure all of the people who used the service had received safe and effective care and treatment. We found they had not taken reasonable and practicable steps to mitigate the risks posed to people who used the service. Care was delivered in ways that placed people who used the service at risk of exposure to significant risks to their health, safety and welfare.
Some people had experienced acute illnesses which should have resulted in emergency services being called but the nurses on duty did not recognise these problems.
Nurses were not meeting people’s needs. For example, people with unstable diabetes had not always received the appropriate treatment. Medication errors had led to people not receiving their required medication. We found that people had experienced avoidable harm such as dehydration, infections, and urinary catheter blockages where action was not being taken to mitigate risks.
Debbie Westhead, Deputy Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care in the North, said:
People are entitled to services which provide safe, effective, compassionate and high quality care.
We found that the care provided at Long Meadow Care Home fell a long way short of what we expect services to provide. We have told the registered provider, Long Meadow (Ripon) Limited that they must take action to resolve the issues we identified.
Our first instinct is to make sure the service improves, but we must also take action to protect people when we are worried about their safety.
We will continue to monitor the provider’s progress in making the necessary improvements to ensure that service users receive the quality of care they are entitled to expect.
Services placed in special measures will be kept under review. In terms of our enforcement actions, we have issued warning notices to Longmeadow Care Home regarding:
- Failing to ensure care and treatment was provided in a safe way.
- Failing to establish effective systems and processes for assessing and monitoring the service.
- Failing to deploy sufficient numbers of suitably qualified, skilled and experienced nurses.
If insufficient action is taken to address these issues we will take further action in line with our enforcement procedures.
