IntraHealth Central and West Lancs Office

Updated 12 May 2023

IntraHealth Central and West Lancs Office is located at Suite 16 Croston House, Lancashire Enterprise Park, Leyland, PR26 6TY. It is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) as an independent health service provider. The service is a location under the organisation ‘IntraHealth’ which provides a range of healthcare services nationally.

IntraHealth Central and West Lancs Office offer a service commissioned by NHS England to provide a School Aged Immunisation Service (SAIS). They provide vaccinations to children and young people in the Central Lancashire and West Lancashire area. They operate vaccination clinics in primary and secondary schools, in their own in-house clinics and at other locations to deliver vaccinations against common infectious diseases such as meningitis, polio, diphtheria, flu and human papillomavirus (HPV).

The Central and West Lancashire Office provides vaccinations to 227 primary schools which encompasses 41,000 pupils and 61 secondary schools which includes18,000 pupils. They follow an annual school timetable of vaccinations which dictates that Diphtheria, Tetanus and Polio (DTP) and meningococcal bacteria – A, C, W and Y vaccinations take place in the first quarter of the year followed by human papillomavirus (HPV) in the months of April to July. Measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) catch up take place in June and July, followed by general catch ups for all missed vaccinations during July and August. This is followed by the flu vaccinations which take place from September to December.

During March 2023 the service undertook 2153 vaccinations for Diphtheria, Tetanus and Polio (DTP), meningococcal bacteria – A, C, W and Y, andHPV. The biggest cohort of vaccinations is for flu vaccinations, the service delivered 5,000 per week during the period from September 2022 to December 2022.

Access to the service is facilitated through the child and young person’s school. Contact is made with parents and caregivers to obtain consent and then the child attended the pre-planned session in their school. Catch up sessions were arranged periodically if vaccinations had been missed.

Information about the SAIS service can be found on the provider’s website: https://www.intrahealth.co.uk/clinical-services/patients/immunisation-vaccination/

The service employs eight clinical nurses and eight administrative staff with both clinical and operational managers over seeing this location and other locations in the North West of England.

The regulated activities that the service provides take place predominately in schools across central and west Lancashire, but also run clinics in other locations such as their own office clinic, community centres and in the child or young person’s home on occasion. As part of this inspection we visited and observed a clinic in a local school to observe the vaccination clinic taking place there.

The service office is open 09.00hrs to 17.00hrs Monday to Friday. The clinic sessions take place at pre-planned times and are arranged with the schools or host locations in advance.

How we inspected this service

As part of the inspection, we requested some information, policies, procedures and other documentation which was reviewed prior to the inspection. We also completed an on-site visit on 26 April 2023. We spoke to staff face to face or by video conferencing remotely, we inspected the environment, made observations and reviewed policies, documents and the records kept around vaccines administered.

To get to the heart of the children and young persons’ experiences of treatment and the experience of their parents and care givers, we always ask the following five questions:

• Is it safe?
• Is it effective?
• Is it caring?
• Is it responsive to people’s needs?
• Is it well-led?

These questions therefore formed the framework for the areas we looked at during the inspection.

Updated 12 May 2023

This service is rated as Good overall.

Following our inspection on 26 April 2023, the key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at IntraHealth Central and West Lancs Office looking at all five key questions. This was the location’s first inspection and rating since registration.

The service is registered to provide the following regulated activities:

• Treatment of disease, disorder or injury

The service provides an immunisations and vaccinations service for school aged children in the Central and West Lancashire region.

The registered manager is Laura De Courcy Davies. A registered manager is a person who is 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.

Our key findings were:

• The service was offered through NHS service provision and free at the point of care to those children and young people who chose to be vaccinated.
• Information for people who used the service was comprehensive and accessible to people. Information was available in paper or electronic format and could be made suitable for younger children or those with individual accessibility issues. The service signposted service users and their parents or caregivers to other sources of advice and information.
• The staff members that delivered immunisations and vaccinations had the relevant skills, knowledge and experience to deliver the services offered.
• The provider had relevant staff recruitment records to ensure they complied with the regulations.
• There were effective systems and processes to assess the risk of, prevent, detect and control the spread of infection and to mitigate the potential risks of infection including that from COVID-19.
• The provider monitored feedback from those who used their service. Evidence was available which showed people commented positively about the service they received.
• Immunisations and vaccinations delivery were safely managed and there was a process to advise on post treatment support to people, should this be required.
• Appropriate informed and written consent were in place. Issues around Gillick competencies were understood and considered where appropriate.
• The service comprehensively recorded all relevant service user information including written consent, pertinent notes, vaccination serial numbers and location and method of administration. Patient records were stored securely to prevent unauthorised access.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are;

• To actively promote the freedom to speak up arrangements in the organisation.
• To provide the different staff teams (clinical and non-clinical) with clarity regarding the overall leadership of the services being delivered at the local level.

The provider had already taken steps to make improvements in these areas following inspection.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Hospitals and Interim Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services