Updated 17 August 2021
Blythe House Hospice was founded in 1989 and is operated by High Peak Hospice Care. It provides nursing, personal care and treatment, health diagnosis and screening associated with end of life and palliative care. A range of services were provided by the hospice to support people's care and treatment. This included an on-site walk in information and advice centre, pre-diagnosis and healthy lifestyle support, alternative therapies, bereavement and counselling support to adults and children and spiritual care. A hospice at home service was also launched in April 2016. This provides personal care to people in their own homes who choose to remain and receive care in their own home at the end of their life.
The community hub offers treatment and advice over the phone, online and through COVID-19 secure face-to-face meetings. Treatments and advise offered include; carer and family support, changes to treatment plan, symptom management and a range of other services.
Blythe House Hospice has a registered manager in post. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like a registered provider, they are 'registered persons.' Registered persons have a legal responsibility for meeting the requirements of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.
We last inspected this hospice on 2 and 11 August 2016 and the report was published in February 2017. We previously rated the hospice as good.
We carried out this unannounced inspection on 28 June 2021. We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.
It was carried out by an inspector and a specialist advisor. The specialist advisor had significant experience of working within the field of palliative and end of life care.
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.
At our inspection we observed how staff interacted with and supported people. We spoke with two people receiving care and treatment. We also spoke with a range of 15 management, clinical, therapy, volunteer, care and support staff, which included the registered manager. We spoke with two relatives of people who had received personal care in their own home from Blythe House hospice at home service.
We looked at four people's care records and a range of other records relating to the management and operation of the service. For example, checks of the quality and safety of people's care, staff training and recruitment records, meeting minutes and complaints records.