12 June 2023
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Averill House is a nursing and residential care home providing personal and nursing care to up to 48 people. The service provides support to older people, some of whom are living with dementia. At the time of our inspection there were 47 people using the service.
Averill House is a purpose-built care property with 3 floors. The ground floor provides residential support, and the first floor provides nursing care. Each floor has two lounges, dining room and adapted bathing facilities. The third floor has a large kitchen and laundry.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
Medicines were not always safely managed. The home took actions to rectify the issues we found following our inspection. A quality assurance system was in place and actions completed for any issues identified. However, the medicines audits had not been robust in identifying the issues we found during this inspection.
People felt safe living at Averill House. Risks were identified and guidance was in place to manage them. There were enough staff to meet people’s care and support needs. Staff were safely recruited. Equipment was regularly checked and serviced in line with legal guidelines. Incidents and accidents were reviewed for any learning to reduce further occurrences. The home was clean throughout, and infection control was well managed.
Staff said the management team were visible in the home and approachable if they needed to speak with them. The home worked well with a range of professionals, including physiotherapists, GPs and district nurses.
People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.
People and relatives said they were involved in agreeing and reviewing their care plans. Relatives said there was good communication with the staff team and any concerns they had were addressed. Staff said they enjoyed working at the home.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection
The last rating for this service was good (published 20 December 2018).
Why we inspected
We received concerns in relation to the management of medicines and people’s nursing care needs. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only.
For those key questions not inspected, we used the ratings awarded at the last inspection to calculate the overall rating. The overall rating for the service has changed from good to requires improvement based on the findings of this inspection.
We looked at infection prevention and control measures under the Safe key question. We look at this in all care home inspections even if no concerns or risks have been identified. This is to provide assurance that the service can respond to COVID-19 and other infection outbreaks effectively.
We have found evidence that the provider needs to make improvements. Please see the safe and well led sections of this full report. Action had been taken to address the issues we identified.
You can see what action we have asked the provider to take at the end of this full report.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Averill House on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Enforcement and Recommendations
We have identified breaches in relation to the safe management of medicines at this inspection.
Please see the action we have told the provider to take at the end of this report.
Follow up
We will request an action plan from the provider to understand what they will do to improve the standards of quality and safety. We will work alongside the provider and local authority to monitor progress. We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service, which will help inform when we next inspect.