\n The hospice in Headingley, run by Sue Ryder, provides adult inpatient and community specialist palliative care services for people with life limiting conditions where curative treatment is no longer an option and people are approaching the end of their life.\n<\/p>\n
\n However, hospice bosses said the report was \u201cshockingly inaccurate\u201d and said they are now seeking legal advice following the CQC\u2019s assessment.\n<\/p>\n
\n Hitting back against the rating, Sue Ryder chief executive James Sanderson said: \u201cSue Ryder is very disappointed with the CQC report into Wheatfields hospice, which we believe is misleading and unnecessarily alarming.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n CQC undertook the inspection to follow up on concerns raised with them about the quality of care being provided to people.\n<\/p>\n
\n Following this inspection, CQC has rated the areas of safe, effective and well-led, as inadequate. Caring has been rated requires improvement, and responsive has been rated good. The hospice was previously rated good overall and for all five domains.\n<\/p>\n
\n CQC has also placed the service into special measures which involves close monitoring to ensure people are safe while they make improvements. Special measures also provides a structured timeframe so services understand when they need to make improvements by, and what action CQC will take if this doesn\u2019t happen.\n<\/p>\n
\n CQC has also begun the process of taking regulatory action to address the concerns which Sue Ryder has the right to appeal.\n<\/p>\n
\n Linda Hirst, CQC deputy director of operations in the north, said: \u201cWhen we inspected Wheatfields, it was disappointing to see how ineffective leadership had directly contributed to poor care. Staff were kind and worked hard to provide compassionate care but were let down by leaders who hadn\u2019t investigated when things went wrong.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cLeaders didn\u2019t respond effectively to concerns about understaffing and low morale, which impacted on people\u2019s care. Staff also said they were frequently unable to take breaks as it placed people at risk due to their being no cover.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThis staff dissatisfaction led to many leaving the service and others planning to leave. Staff also reported that leaders put pressure on teams to take new admissions into the hospice regardless of the service being understaffed which placed people at further risk of harm.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cPeople didn\u2019t always receive their medications in a timely manner due to only one nurse being on shift, meaning medication rounds were often delayed, and some people were in pain whilst waiting.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cAdditionally, leaders didn\u2019t listen to people\u2019s preferences, and care delivery was very task-focused with little consideration of people\u2019s values, aspirations or goals. Staff wanted to spend more time with people but didn\u2019t have time due to excessive workloads.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe have told leaders where we expect to see rapid, and continued improvements and will continue to monitor the hospice closely to keep people safe while this happens. We will return to check on their progress and won\u2019t hesitate to use our regulatory powers further if people aren\u2019t receiving the care they have a right to expect.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Inspectors found:\n<\/p>\n
\n \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Leaders didn\u2019t ensure staff had the right skills, qualifications and experience to meet people\u2019s needs.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Leaders failed to support and supervise staff to ensure they were competent in their roles.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Leaders didn\u2019t always consult with staff and people when there had been significant service reductions such as the closure of the day centre and the loss of palliative care social workers and nurse-managed beds.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Staff didn\u2019t always work well with people or health system partners to establish and maintain safe systems of care.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The service didn\u2019t always follow infection prevention control measures to keep people safe from infection.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 People requiring additional support or needing referrals to external services experienced delays in receiving appropriate assistance.\n<\/p>\n
\n In response to the CQC report Sue Ryder chief executive James Sanderson said: \u201cThe hospice is in an ongoing period of improvement, but we challenge a significant number of the CQC\u2019s findings as factually inaccurate. In addition, the process of the inspection, the behaviours of the inspector and the lack of context and selectivity have created serious concerns over the report\u2019s integrity.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cOur own quality assurance and safety controls identified areas that required improvement during a comprehensive internal review last year, following a proactive decision temporarily to close, and the CQC was informed of our findings. Those included poor behaviours amongst some staff and concerns regarding their clinical practice, which resulted in a formal investigation and several employees at all levels of the service leaving the organisation.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cA new leadership team was appointed and the improvements led by that team over the last 12 months demonstrate Sue Ryder\u2019s staunch adherence to our responsibilities as a responsible provider and our commitment to a significant development programme at Wheatfields, focused on patient care.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cAt no point have we found evidence to suggest that any patients received unsafe care. The safety of our patients is paramount and when we were unable to secure safe staffing levels last year we temporarily closed the inpatient unit. We would not hesitate to do the same again if we felt it necessary.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe CQC report mentions understaffing of the inpatient unit, but during the period referenced, there were four shifts out of 453 (0.88%) where we were one staff member down due to last minute sickness. Mitigation plans were put in place, including the leadership team stepping in to support colleagues.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cSue Ryder has had a strong working relationship with the CQC for many years and respects them as our regulator. However, despite attempts to work constructively with them during this inspection process, we have sadly been left with no choice but to seek legal advice in relation to this report and what we feel is a shockingly inaccurate assessment of Wheatfields hospice.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n The report will be published on CQC\u2019s website in the next few days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The hospice in Headingley, run by Sue Ryder, provides adult inpatient and community specialist palliative care services for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8814],"tags":[748,393,4884,1860,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-378933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-leeds","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-leeds","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115103497243329069","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}