The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated Solutions 4 Health Newcastle, inadequate and placed the service into special measures to protect people following an inspection in July.
Solutions 4 Health Newcastle ran by Solutions 4 Health Limited is an independent community sexual health service. It provides confidential sexual health services from accessible clinics, including information and advice on all types of contraception, STI testing and treatment.
This was CQC’s first inspection of the service. The areas of safe and well-led have been rated inadequate, and responsive, effective and caring have been rated requires improvement. The service was in breach of legal regulations in relation to safeguarding, staffing, the safety of premises and equipment and how the service is managed.
The service has been placed in special measures which involves close monitoring to ensure people are safe while Solutions 4 Health Limited 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’t happen
Inspectors found:
- Staff reported that learning wasn’t shared with the wider organisation to learn lessons after incidents occurred.
- The service was experiencing delays in receiving test results, which led to people receiving delayed treatment.
- Staff spoke highly of the head of operations but said that the organisational culture was not always positive and supportive.
- Leaders didn’t ensure safeguarding concerns were referred appropriately to CQC.
- Inspectors found 11 records that had no documentation of people’s medical history, allergies, lifestyle review or safeguarding assessments.
- Leaders didn’t ensure there were enough qualified, skilled and experienced staff to meet people’s needs.
- Staff raised several concerns regarding infection prevention and control issues at the service that could place people at risk. For example, some test swabs were left uncovered and could have been contaminated.