22 August and 5 September 2019
During a routine inspection
East of England Hyperbaric is operated by London Hyperbaric Medicine (LHM) Healthcare Ltd. The service provides hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) therapy for up to seven patients per session in a multiplace hyperbaric chamber.
The service provides HBO services for adults and children from the East Anglia region and across the country.
We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out the announced part of the inspection on 22 August 2019 along with an unannounced visit to the unit on 5 September 2019.
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? Where we have a legal duty to do so we rate services’ performance against each key question as outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate.
Throughout the inspection, we took account of what people told us and how the provider understood and complied with the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
Services we do not rate
We regulate hyperbaric oxygen therapy services, but we do not currently have a legal duty to rate them when they are provided as a single specialty service. We highlight good practice and issues that service providers need to improve and take regulatory action as necessary.
We found the following areas of good practice:
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Patient feedback about the service was consistently positive.
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Staff spoke positively about the culture of the service.
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Staff completed thorough risk assessments for each patient using the service.
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Equipment records, and policies were detailed and up to date.
However, we also found the following issues that the service provider needs to improve:
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Staff could not easily access the resuscitation equipment trolley.
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There were no historic records of resuscitation equipment checks as staff completed these on laminated sheets which they wiped clean at the end of each month.
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The risk register did not identify risks to the service and had not been recently reviewed and updated.
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There was little evidence of sharing of learning from incidents.
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.
Heidi Smoult
Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals