CQC Inspection Report and Rating Statement
In June 2022 Core Medical Solutions was inspected by the CQC and it was ultimately found that some of our governance systems, including evidence trails required improvement. As a result, we were given a rating of inadequate.
We were very disappointed with this outcome and the report, as patient care and safety is the number one priority for us, and we have always been confident that our operating processes and procedures were robust and well monitored. This was further exemplified when we were awarded ISO 9001 (15) accreditation in May 2022.
We felt that some of the items on the report would have been better demonstrated had the inspector been able to attend the second site visit for observation that had originally been booked which they were unfortunately unable to attend. Core Medical has NEVER used untrained staff to carry out procedures. Our radiographers professional status can be checked online at Check the register
We now understand that some of our background systems for monitoring and reporting needed to be overhauled in order to demonstrate more clearly how we work and show how we identify areas of potential improvement.
Having been given a list of improvements required and a timeframe in which to comply, we have now corrected the shortcomings, and are awaiting a follow up inspection to correct our overall rating. We are also appointing Sarah Maroney our Operations Manager to the position of CQC manager as, over time she has taken on more of the duties surrounding compliance issues and will be better suited to communicating these to the CQC in future than our existing manager.
We look forward to our further inspection which will ratify the improvements made.
We are confident that our systems now demonstrate more effectively the good work that our patients and partner hospitals already observe.
During this process we have come to see this experience as a valuable opportunity to look at systems under real scrutiny and from multiple perspectives which has given us new ideas we may not have had otherwise. Overall, we now feel this experience can help not only our company and partners to find ways to improve standards, but can ultimately help to improve standards in ESWL services around the country.
Improvements made since our inspected include but ae not limited to:
- In addition to our existing staff training programme, we have included and completed all the training in line with the Skills for health core skills framework., and updated our training policy to include this.
- Our staff have certificated Safeguarding training at the level required, as well as the additional in-house training.
- The policies and procedures identified as inadequate have been updated. Documentation has been overhauled to better provide evidence of our procedures in practice.
- Our pre-treatment patient assessment documentation has been updated to better reflect our process in place to confirm patient safety at all times.
- Risk assessments are regularly updated.
- A structured audit plan has been documented and is in practice
- Our staff records are digitalised making it easier to demonstrate the safe keeping of these records.
- The patient feedback process has been changed to an online system which gives us better control over processing the outcomes and learning.
- We had considered our reflection of our vision and strategy as strong based on our recent ISO 9001 (15) accreditation, and ongoing audits to retain this status. However, on reflection this is now being adapted to work better for both ISO and CQC inspection purposes.
- We are in the process of replacing our registered CQC manager.
For additional information please contact our Operations Director Sarah Lazzari@coremedicalsolutions.
Best Regards
Don Applegate
Managing Director