The Priory Care Home

Updated 21 August 2019

The inspection:

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection checked whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Inspection team:

This inspection was carried out by one inspector and an assistant inspector.

Service and service type: The Priory Care Home is a care home. People in care homes receive accommodation and nursing or personal care. CQC regulates both the premises and the care provided, and both were looked at during this inspection. The Priory Care Home accommodates up to 30 people in one adapted building.

The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. This means that they and the provider are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.

Notice of inspection: This inspection was unannounced.

What we did:

Providers are required to send us key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. This information helps support our inspections. We used information the provider sent to us in the Provider Information return (PIR). We looked at information we held about the service, including notifications they had made to us about important events. We also reviewed all other information sent to us from other organisations, for example, the local authority.

During the inspection, we spoke with five people who lived at the home and two relatives to ask about their experience of care. We spoke with the registered manager, two senior care two care staff, and three domestic staff. We used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a way of observing care to help us understand the experience of people who could not talk with us.

We looked at six people’s care records, compliments received and multiple medication records. We saw records relating to the management of the home. These included minutes of meetings with staff and quality surveys. We also saw systems used to manage complaints and any accidents and incidents which may occur. In addition, we looked at records of activities people had enjoyed doing and checks on the safety of the environment. A variety of records relating to the management of the service, including policies and procedures were reviewed.

Updated 21 August 2019

About the service: The Priory Care Home is a care home providing care for up to 30 older people, some of whom live with dementia or physical disabilities. There were 28 people living at the home at the time of the inspection.

People’s experience of using this service:

People were positive about how the home was managed. The registered manager had driven through improvements in the environment and checks on the care provided, with support from the provider. The registered manager understood their responsibilities and acted to inform CQC of important events at the home. People benefited from living in a home where they and staff felt listened to.

Staff had further enhanced how people’s rights to privacy was promoted and people were treated with dignity and respect. People enjoyed their life at the home and had developed strong bonds with the staff who supported them.

Staff understood the risk to people’s safety and acted to reduce these. There were enough staff to care for people and staff promptly supported people when they wanted assistance. Staff supported people to have their medicines safely and checks were undertaken to ensure these were administered as prescribed.

People told us staff knew how to look after them and staff assisted people to achieve the best health and well-being possible, including when people were at the end of their lives. People were supported to have enough to eat and drink so they enjoyed the best health possible. People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible; the policies and systems in the service supported this.

People were consulted when people’s care was assessed, planned and reviewed, so people’s needs continued to be met. People had opportunities to do things which they enjoyed, and their communication needs were considered when their care was planned.

Rating at last inspection and update: The last rating for this service was requires improvement (published 4 August 2018) and there were multiple breaches of regulation. The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show what they would do and by when to improve. At this inspection we found improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations

Why we inspected: This was a planned inspection based on the rating at the last inspection.

Follow up: We will continue to monitor intelligence we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our inspection programme. If any concerning information is received, we may inspect sooner.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk