After a damning report into the Sue Ryder Wheatfields Hospice in Leeds, the hospice disputes the findings and is seeking legal advice.
After the Care Quality Commission (CQC) rated Sue Ryder Wheatfields Hospice in Headingley, near Leeds, as inadequate, the hospice has fought back, calling the report “misleading and unnecessarily alarming”.
Sue Ryder Wheatfields Hospice, 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.
CQC undertook the inspection in March and May to follow up on concerns raised with them about the quality of care being provided to people.
Following this inspection, CQC has rated the areas of safe, effective and well-led as inadequate. Caring has been rated as requiring improvement. It has also placed the service into special measures, which involve close monitoring to ensure people are safe while they make improvements.
“When 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’t investigated when things went wrong,” said Linda Hirst, CQC deputy director of operations in the north.
“Leaders didn’t respond effectively to concerns about understaffing and low morale, which impacted on people’s care. Staff also said they were frequently unable to take breaks as it placed people at risk due to there being no cover,” she continued.
Factually inaccurate
Sue Ryder, however, has fought back against what it calls a “factually inaccurate” assessment of the Wheatfields Hospice.
It admitted that its own quality assurance and safety controls had identified areas that required improvement during a comprehensive internal review last year. These followed a proactive decision temporarily to close. They 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.
Following that, it said that a new leadership team was appointed and that there have been many improvements.
“At no point have we found evidence to suggest that any patients received unsafe care,” it said.
It also said that although the CQC mentioned understaffing of the inpatient unit, this only referred to four shifts out of 453, where there was one staff member down due to last-minute sickness.
In the note seen by Healthcare Today, it concluded: “Sue 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.”
