Quality Assurance

  • Quality monitoring audits.  Our unique QMA tool underpins a thorough inspection covering all the areas that care home operators need to consider in order to comply with the Essential Standards of Quality and Safety.  Following the inspection we provide our client with a detailed report of our findings, including recommendations regarding any corrective actions needed to remedy any shortfalls in compliance or poor practice.  The goal is to put the provider in a position of knowledge regarding compliance and what needs to be done to rectify any shortfalls before they can be spotted by a CQC inspector or a local authority compliance officer and become potentially costly regulatory or contractual issues.
  • Service delivery improvement.  We can advise on a plan of action to assist care providers who wish to improve their services.  Having inspected a service and prepared an improvement plan we can then return at a later date to check the progress made and consider any difficulties that have occurred with the implementation of the plan.

Case study

Our client is the proprietor of a 63 bed nursing home for elderly people with dementia. The home had an impressive track record, receiving high quality ratings from the CSCI/CQC at every inspection and maintaining virtually full occupancy. 

Despite this, the owner wanted an objective, external view of the service and asked us to carry out a comprehensive quality monitoring audit, using our bespoke audit tool, to confirm the acknowledged areas of strength and identify any weaknesses so that they could be eliminated, thus improving the performance and quality of the home still further (subsequently rated ‘excellent’ by CQC). 

This year we found some previously absent weaknesses in the medication administration records and some gaps in staff training records. 

The manager was glad to be informed of these and was able to take action to remedy the defects before they caused any problems. 

The quality monitoring process also provided excellent evidence of the home’s proactive approach to quality assurance to include in the Provider Compliance Assessments required by CQC. Result: occupancy remains outstandingly high.