Passmonds House Care Home served with enforcement notice

Passmonds House Care Home on Edenfield Road has been issued with an enforcement notice following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission.

During the unannounced inspection, which followed on from inspections in February and March, the home failed three out of five assessed areas.

The inspection, which was carried out in June, found that the home had problems with management of medicines and records and problems with monitoring the quality of care.

Following the inspection, the CQC has ordered that the home make the required changes.

When inspectors made a second visit in March, they found that the registered manager of the home was on long term sick leave – they have since resigned from the post. New management arrangements were in place but they had not registered with the CQC, which is a legal requirement for any care home manager.

An inspection of care record audit files, found that checks had not been completed during May or June – something that should have been done on a monthly basis.

Fire risk assessments had also not been reviewed since 2012 and although the provider claimed that a more recent assessment had taken place there was no evidence to support this.

The report also noted that special instructions were not in place on medication to ensure that patients were receiving the most benefit. Staff also failed to provide guidance on how resident’s medication needs would be best met when they were away from the home.

Following a previous inspection, after finding a breakdown in communication between staff and visiting nurses, a communication book had been put in place. Even though this had happened, there was no evidence of visits made by the district nurses being documented.

The home appealed the decision made by the CQC as they believed that the inspector’s findings were too harsh but the CQC upheld their decision.

Passmonds House had not responded to an invitation to comment by the time of publication.