Failures in NHS standards exposed by watchdog

Posted 01/07/2012

More than a quarter of NHS and social care services in England are failing to meet all the essential standards they should according to regulators. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspected 14,000 sites – including hospitals, care homes and dental practices – representing more than a third of the services for which the CQS has responsibility. Among common themes identified were staff shortages, and poor management of medicines. Maternity care was flagged up as units are struggling to keep pace with rising birth rates.Where problems were identified managers were told to draw up action places to improve performance but in 130 cases the performance was so bad that the inspectors demanded urgent action be taken, in some cases this resulted in restrictions being placed on the service. In one case a nursing home was barred from admitting new residents because of concerns over the way drugs were handed out.In total 27% of locations inspected failed to meet all the 16 standards covering health and care. 22% of the 581 NHS sites were failing to meet all the requirements. Care was being compromised by a lack of qualified staff in many places. 850 independent healthcare providers were looked at with 18% deemed not to be meeting all the standards. Record keeping was a common problem.In social care, 28% of 12,000 care homes and home care services were judged not to be up to scratch. Some of the buildings were in poor condition and staff were said to be struggling to cope with increasingly complex medicine regimes. Dental practices performed much better with only 12% not meeting standards.