GMT Healthcare

Updated 6 June 2019

The inspection:

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

The inspection was prompted in part by a complaint about the quality of the service.

Inspection team:

The inspection was carried out by one inspector.

Service and service type:

This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats. It provides a service to older adults, younger disabled adults and people with physical and/or learning disabilities.

Not everyone using GMT Healthcare receives regulated activity; CQC only inspects the service being received by people provided with ‘personal care’; help with tasks related to personal hygiene and eating. Where they do we also take into account any wider social care provided.

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. The registered manager was also the provider.

Notice of inspection:

We gave the service 48 hours’ notice of the inspection visit because it is small and the manager is often out of the office supporting staff or providing care. We needed to be sure that they would be in.

Inspection site visit activity started on 13 May 2019 and ended on 16 May 2019. We visited the office location on 13 and 16 May 2019 to see the manager and to review care records and policies and procedures. We spoke with people who used the service, relatives and staff on the telephone on 15 May 2019.

What we did:

We used the information we held about the service to formulate our inspection plan. This included checking for any statutory notifications that the provider had sent to us. A statutory notification is information about important events which the provider is required to send us by law. We used information the provider sent us in the Provider Information Return (PIR). This is information we require providers to send us at least once annually to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We also spoke with commissioners about GMT Healthcare.

During the inspection, we spoke with four people who used the service and four relatives. We also spoke with the registered manager and five care staff. We reviewed the care records for four people to see whether they were accurate and up to date. These included care plans, daily care records and medicine administration records. We looked at records relating to the management of the service. These included eight staff recruitment records, training records, policies and procedures and quality assurance records.

Updated 6 June 2019

About the service: GMT Healthcare is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own homes. It was providing personal care to 16 people at the time of the inspection.

People’s experience of using this service:

Improvements were required to the systems for managing people’s medicines to ensure they were consistently safe. Staff knew people’s risks and how to manage and reduce them to keep people safe, however documentation about risks was not always clear.

People were not always supported to consent to their care in line with law and guidance. People were not always supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives; the policies and systems in the service did not support this practice.

The registered manager needed to ensure staff had all the knowledge and skills required to support people effectively.

The registered manager and provider needed to improve the systems in place to ensure people consistently received safe and good quality care.

Systems were in place to protect people from abuse and staff understood them. People were supported by enough safely recruited staff who knew how to keep people safe.

People were supported by kind and caring staff. People and their relatives were encouraged to be involved in making decisions about their care. People were supported by staff who respected their privacy and dignity and promoted their independence.

Staff understood people’s preferences and people were happy with the personalised care they received.

People knew how to make a complaint if required and felt able to do so. People’s end of life wishes were considered when appropriate.

People and staff told us they found the management team approachable. People and staff felt engaged with the service. The registered manager had plans in place to make improvements and had learned lessons when things had gone wrong.

Rating at last inspection: This was the first inspection of GMT Healthcare since it registered with us (CQC).

Why we inspected: This was a planned inspection as the service had not been inspected since their registration with us (CQC), however we had received information of concern prior to the inspection which helped inform the inspection process.

Enforcement: We identified two breaches of regulations. To see the action we told the provider to take, refer to the end of the full report. We have asked the provider to tell us how they plan to make improvements to become compliant with regulations.

Follow up: We will continue to monitor the service through the information we receive and we will check if improvements have been made at our next inspection.

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