Willows Green Hospital

Updated 1 December 2023

Willows Green Independent Hospital provides long term High Dependency Rehabilitation. The hospital opened in March 2022. Willows Green Hospital had two female patients.

We previously inspected the hospital in March 2023 and rated safe, effective, and well led as inadequate, caring as requires improvement and responsive as good. As a result, we issued Section 29 warning notice to the provider.

We carried out this latest inspection to follow up on the progress made following the previous inspection.

On this inspection the hospital still had four wards but three were closed and the two patients were both nursed on the same ward. The provider was not accepting new admissions at the time of the inspection.

Following the previous inspection, a new registered manager had been appointed.

The provider was registered to provide the following regulated activities:

Assessment or medical treatment for persons detained under the Mental Health Act 1983 Treatment of disease, disorder, or injury.

What people who use the service say

We spoke to both patients and their carers. They had similar complaints as at the last inspection and continued to tell us they were not satisfied with the hospital. Carers felt that they were still not fully aware of all incidents and that communication could be better.

One patient raised a concern about another patient’s noise levels, however the patient had been provided with a quieter environment.

Both carers felt the hospital did not communicate effectively and quickly with them but did feel that this was changing with the new management team in place.

Updated 1 December 2023

Our rating of this location improved. We rated it as requires improvement because:

• The provider had failed to provide a stable multi-disciplinary team and since the last inspection did not have a psychologist or occupational therapist in post. There was now a locum psychiatrist.
• A new electronic care record system was in place, but staff were not aware of the functionality that when searching for care plans, only those created within the date range requested were available, so they did not always see all the historic care plans when using the system.
• The provider was unable to provide copies of hospital induction training and observation competency checks for all staff. This meant we were not assured that staff had been inducted to their role.
• At the time of inspection, the service did not have an agreed safeguarding policy with the local safeguarding board.
• The provider had an occupational therapy kitchen however, it was not used as such and was used by staff for their own purposes.

However:

• After the last inspection extra members of nursing staff had been employed and only two agency nursing staff were used permanently.
• There was now limited use of bank or agency staff, as the provider had employed new health care assistants.
• The management team had been increased to include a deputy manager and a clinical lead nurse.
• All staff now received face to face safeguarding training.
• The ward environments were safe and clean.
• Managers ensured that staff received supervision.

Updated 1 December 2023