Wigan nursing home fails to improve

An unannounced visit from Care Quality Commission officers in January revealed that St George’s Care Home, located on Windsor Street, “requires improvement” for the second time in five months.

The report, which was published on Monday, stated that the standard of leadership at the home was “inadequate”, a deterioration since the previous assessment in September 2016. However since the January inspection, Abin Francis, the newly registered manager at St George’s told the Observer that many of the concerns have now been addressed.

Mr Francis said: “This latest inspection was a focussed one following the inspection in September last year. It was based on two issues, one being medication and one record keeping. Since then everything has been going as planned. A lot of the concerns have been addressed and things have been changed. We have been working with the council, the Clinical Commissioning Group and other bodies across the country.”

In the last three audits at the nursing home, CQC inspectors reported that there was no registered manager, however the appointment of Mr Francis is a direct response to this concern.

January’s inspection revealed that since September the home had also failed to meet “legal requirements” concerning care planning and recording of information.

Inspectors wrote: “At the last inspection on September 14 and 15 2016 we had concerns regarding the quality of care planning and recording and this was a breach of Regulation 17(2)(c)(d) of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. “At this focused inspection on January 3 we found the service was still not meeting the requirements of this regulation.

“We looked at both the electronic system and paper copy records for one person. With both systems in place care documentation was difficult to follow.

“Paper copy records were missing or did not correspond to risk assessments. Care plans existed for pressure care, diet, hypertension, falls and medication. Evidence indicated that regular review by the community dietician was on-going.”

However, the report was a tale of two halves, showing that where shortfalls have been picked up, actions have also been taken to improve the safety of the services. During the September inspection, warning flags were raised about the management of medicine, with CQC officers finding out of date blood testing kits and medicines stored at the wrong temperature.

But in the latest report, inspectors said that the members of staff had “followed the action plan they had written to meet shortfalls previously identified safe management of medicines” and that the service was now “meeting the requirements of this regulation.”