Archived: Direct Health (Tyneside)

Updated 31 March 2016

We undertook an unannounced focused inspection of Direct Health (Tyneside) on 7 January 2016.

This inspection was done to check that improvements to meet legal requirements planned by the provider had been made after our comprehensive inspection on 4 and 5 August 2015.

We inspected the service against one of the five questions we ask about services: ‘Is the service safe?’ This was because the service was not meeting some legal requirements at the time of our comprehensive inspection.

This inspection was undertaken by one adult social care inspector. During the inspection we met and talked with the registered manager, a care co-ordinator and a company trainer. We reviewed four people’s care records, five people’s medicines records and audits and training records relating to medicines management.

Updated 31 March 2016

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection of this service on 4 and 5 August 2015. Breaches of legal requirements were found. After the comprehensive inspection, the provider wrote to us to say what they would do to meet legal requirements in relation to safeguarding people’s personal finances and medicines management.

We undertook this focused inspection on 7 January 2016 to check that they had followed their plan and to confirm that they now met legal requirements. This report only covers our findings in relation to these requirements. You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the 'all reports' link for Direct Health (Tyneside) on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Direct Health (Tyneside) is a domiciliary care agency that provides home care services to people in North Tyneside and Gateshead. At the time of our inspection services were provided to 144 people who were predominantly older people, people with dementia-related conditions and other mental health needs, and people with physical and learning disabilities.

The service had a registered manager in post. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

We found the provider had met the assurances they had given in their action plan and were no longer in breach of the regulations.

Improved systems were in place to ensure that people’s personal finances were handled safely.

The recording of medicines administered to people had improved and regular audits were carried out to check that people’s medicines were being managed appropriately.