Response Services Group UK Ltd

Response Services Group is operated by Response Services Group UK Limited. The service provides a patient transport service and event medical cover.

We carried out a focused unannounced inspection on 31 October 2019 in response to some information of concern, received by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) regarding the patient transport service. Our inspection focused on regulation 12 safe care and treatment, regulation 13 safeguarding, regulation 17 good governance and regulation 19 fit and proper persons (employed).

A focused inspection differs to a comprehensive inspection, as it is more targeted looking

at specific concerns rather than gathering a holistic view across a service or provider.

In our comprehensive inspections, to get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment we ask the same five questions of all services: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs, and well led?

Focused inspections do not usually look at all five key questions; they focus on the areas indicated by the information that triggers the focused inspection. Although they are smaller in scale, focused inspections broadly follow the same process as a comprehensive inspection.

We inspected but did not rate the safe, effective and well led domains. We did not inspect caring, and responsive. The focus of our inspection related to mandatory training, safeguarding, infection prevention and control, and competent staff.

The service has one location. We looked at the vehicle storage, preparation and storage areas and one ambulance vehicle. We reviewed 10 staff files, the staff training database with five individual staff training records, provider policies and procedures. We spoke with two members of staff, an administrative member of staff and the managing director who was also the Registered Manager.

The main service provided by this service was event medical provision which was an unregulated activity. The main regulated activity was patient transport services but this was a small proportion of the work undertaken.

Due to the focused nature of the inspection we did not rate the service or inspect all key lines of enquiry within each domain.

We found the following issues that the service provider needs to improve:

• Not all staff had the required level of safeguarding training required for the role.

• The safeguarding referral process was not robust.

• Mandatory training completion was inconsistent across staff groups.

• Infection prevention and control (IPC) processes were not fully embedded and the provider was unable to evidence the completion of work undertaken.

• The paper based staff records held by the provider did not fully match with the computer records held. The paper based records did not fully reflect the detail captured in the computer records. There was no record of appraisals or staff supervision within the paper based records nor within the computer system.

However:

• Recruitment polices were in place and were followed with the recruitment of staff

• All staff had an up to date disclosure and barring service (DBS) check recorded.

• All staff had had references recorded.

Following this inspection, we told the provider that it should make improvements, even though a regulation had not been breached, to help the service improve. Details are at the end of the report.

Ann Ford

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals (North Region), on behalf of the Chief Inspector of Hospitals