IntraHealth East Lancs Office

This service is rated as Good overall.

Following our inspection on 25 April 2023 the key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at IntraHealth East Lancs Office as part of our inspection programme, and to provide the service with a rating.

IntraHealth East Lancs Office is a service commissioned by NHS England and provides a School Aged Immunisation Service (SAIS). The service provides children and young people, usually within a school setting, with a vaccination service to boost and immunise against well-known infections such as measles, mumps and rubella (MMR), human papilloma virus (HPV) and influenza (Flu). A rigorous vaccination programme was established where primary and secondary schools were visited in East Lancashire and Blackburn with Darwen each school year.

The provider of the service is IntraHealth Ltd who provide a wide range of primary medical service including GPs practices, community pharmacies and telehealth screening.

The registered manager is Laura De Courcy Davies. A registered manager is a person who is registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons.’ Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

Our key findings were:

• Systems to safeguard children and young people (patients) were well established and effective. There were systems and processes in place to identify vulnerable children, and action was taken to flag potential concerns to ensure the safety of the children.

• The nursing teams and administrative teams worked in harmony together. Each team demonstrated a clear understanding of their role and responsibilities and how they worked together to provide a safe and effective vaccination service within different school settings.

• The SAIS nursing teams were proactive in offering education visits to local school children and to faith leaders of different communities to explain the importance of immunisations.

• The organisational culture was one of promoting learning and development. Incidents, complaints and staff suggestions were all used to inform and promote improvement in the quality of the services provided.

• Staff feedback forms and staff spoken with during our inspection provided positive feedback, with staff stating the IntraHealth organisation was a supportive and caring organisation to work for. Staff also told us they enjoyed their work and felt very much part of a team.

• Commissioners of the service provided positive feedback, stating the service was flexible, adaptable and effective.

• Evidence shared with us demonstrated governance systems were being reviewed and strengthened and quality improvement work was being undertaken.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• To actively promote the freedom to speak up arrangements in the organisation.
• To provide the different staff teams (clinical and non-clinical) with clarity regarding the overall leadership of the services being delivered at the local level.

The provider had already taken steps to make improvements in these areas following the inspection.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Hospitals and Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services