Kings Norton Kidney Treatment Centre

Updated 2 April 2020

Kings Norton Kidney Treatment Centre is operated by Diaverum Facilities Management Limited. The service opened in 2014. It is a privately run satellite dialysis clinic offering dialysis to adult NHS patients from a large hospital trust located in and around Birmingham.

The service is registered to provide the regulated activity of treatment of disease, disorder or illness. It offers haemodialysis to patients with end-stage renal failure.

Haemodialysis is a method for removing waste products and water from the blood in severe kidney failure. Haemodialysis is one of three renal replacement treatments, the other two being kidney transplantation and peritoneal dialysis.

The clinic manager was the registered manager. They had been in post since August 2018, shortly before our previous inspection in October 2018 and were formally registered with CQC as a registered manager in September 2019.

There were no special reviews or investigations of the hospital ongoing by the CQC at any time during the 12 months before this inspection. The service has been inspected twice previously, and the most recent inspection took place in October 2018, following which the service was rated Requires Improvement overall. Following the 2018 inspection, two requirement notices were issued in response to breaches of Regulation 12 (Health and Social Care Act): Safe Care and Treatment and Regulation 16 (CQC Registration Regulations): Notification of death of a service user.

Updated 2 April 2020

Kings Norton Kidney Treatment Centre is operated by Diaverum Facilities Management Limited. The service has 20 dialysis stations which includes four isolation rooms for patients who are or may be infectious.

The service provides dialysis for patients aged 18 and over.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out an unannounced inspection on the 4 February 2020.

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 rate

Our rating of this service improved. We rated it as Good overall.

The service had enough staff to care for patients and keep them safe. Staff had training in key skills, understood how to protect patients from abuse, and managed safety well. The service controlled infection risk well. Staff assessed risks to patients, acted on them and kept good care records. The service managed safety incidents well and learned lessons from them. Staff collected safety information and used it to improve the service.

Staff provided good care and treatment. Managers monitored the effectiveness of the service and made sure staff were competent. Staff worked well together for the benefit of patients, advised them on how to lead healthier lives, supported them to make decisions about their care, and had access to good information. Key services were available six days a week.

Staff treated patients with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity, took account of their individual needs, and helped them understand their conditions. They provided emotional support to patients, families and carers.

The service planned care to meet the needs of local people, took account of patients’ individual needs, and made it easy for people to give feedback. People could access the service when they needed it and did not have to wait too long for treatment. When problems were identified with accessing treatment due to third party providers (patient transport) the service worked to monitor and manage this.

Leaders ran services well using reliable information systems and supported staff to develop their skills. Staff understood the service’s vision and values, and how to apply them in their work. Staff felt respected, supported and valued. They were focused on the needs of patients receiving care. Staff were clear about their roles and accountabilities. The service engaged well with patients to plan and manage services and all staff were committed to improving services continually.

We found areas of practice that required improvement:

The service external clinical waste collection area, and a sharps bin awaiting collection, were not secured. We found this at our previous inspection in 2018 and saw this was still the case in 2020.

We found a procedure relating to the preparation and administration of low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) medicine was unclear and may have left patients at risk of harm. Post inspection, we received an updated version of this procedure and a risk assessment to support this.

The service did not always evidence how they had adapted written material, in particular consent forms, to be accessible to patients who required alternative formats.

The service had one set of scales for patient use. Although another set was available at a clinic nearby; if these were needed this could delay patient treatment sessions.

The patient satisfaction survey results had worsened since 2018 due to various factors. However, we saw action plans and engagement were ongoing to improve this.

Following this inspection, we told the provider that it must make an improvement as Regulation 12: Safe Care and Treatment (Health and Social Care Act) had been breached. In addition, we told the provider it should make other 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 (Midlands)

Updated 2 April 2020

Kings Norton Kidney Treatment Centre is operated by Diaverum Facilities Management Limited. The service has 20 dialysis stations which includes four isolation rooms for patients who are or may be infectious.

The service provides dialysis for patients aged 18 and over.

We rated this service as good overall. We rated ‘safe’ as requires improvement and all other domains as ‘good’.