London Urgent Care Centre Placed into Special Measures by the CQC

An urgent care centre at St Mary’s hospital in Paddington, north-west London, has been rated Inadequate overall and placed into Special Measures by the Care Quality Commission.

St Mary’s Urgent Care Centre, located within St Mary's Hospital, which is run by Vocare Limited, was rated Inadequate for being safe, effective and well-led. It was rated Requires Improvement for being caring and Good for being responsive to people’s needs, after the inspection in July 2017.

• Opportunities to prevent or minimise harm were missed as there was insufficient oversight and monitoring of ongoing incidents and risks both at local and organisational level.
• There was insufficient attention to safeguarding children and vulnerable adults.
• The provider had insufficient assurances in place to demonstrate that people received effective care.

Areas where inspectors found Vocare must make improvements include:

• Ensuring care and treatment is provided in a safe way to patients.
• Introducing effective methods to achieve good governance - in accordance with the requirements of the fundamental standards of care.
• Ensuring sufficient numbers of suitably qualified, competent, skilled and experienced persons are deployed to meet the fundamental standards of care and treatment.
• Ensuring staff receive the appropriate support, training, professional development, supervision and appraisal necessary to enable them to carry out the duties.

Areas where the provider should make improvements include:

• Reviewing the fire evacuation procedure to ensure all staff understand what to do in the event of a fire.
• Reviewing auditory privacy at all points of patient access to the service.
• Reviewing how patients with a hearing impairment would access the service.
• Considering providing patient literature in languages aligned to people using the service.

Michele Golden, Head of General Practice Inspection in London, said “We found there had been a lack of clear management and clinical leadership and staff had not felt supported in their day-to-day roles at Vocare Limited’s St Mary’s Urgent Care Centre."

“CQC is placing this service in special measures. Services placed in special measures will be inspected again within six months. If insufficient improvements have been made, we will take action in line with our enforcement procedures to begin the process of preventing the provider from operating the service."

“However, staff did say that communication and engagement had improved since an interim management team had been in place. On the day of the inspection we observed members of staff were courteous and helpful to patients and treated them with dignity and respect.”