Neighbours and a former staff member at the Baldock Manor mental health unit have called the site ‘a shambles’ in the wake of a damning report from the Care Quality Commission.
The CQC report, published on October 17, told of patients being secluded and restricted without senior staff taking action, missing meals and eating off trays on their laps because of a lack of table space.
The report – which relates to a series of visits in November 2015 – on deemed Baldock Manor inadequate in terms of safety, effectiveness, responsiveness and leadership, and also called for improvements to caring, which it concluded was not always compassionate.
And one source told the Comet afterwards: “Acute mental health care is in crisis nationwide as well as locally. It’s too important to allow this appalling level of care provision to receive public money and go unchallenged.
“My concern is that Herts and other NHS trusts are putting residents into this place, using taxpayers’ money, and they are being badly let down by the owners Nouvita Ltd.
“The place is a shambles. Who picks up the pieces?”
Among many other things, the report told of staff arguing in front of patients and speaking foreign languages on the ward – something a former staff member also reported to the Comet.
A facility spokesman said this had been resolved and that policy was for staff to speak English on duty.
The former worker described an incident when a patient broke his ankle while outside the hospital and, on phoning the ward, was told by the nurse in charge to make his own way back because of a shortage of staff.
“A argument took place between staff about this decision and we were not short of staff,” we were told.
“On return from hospital, manor staff failed to give him adequate pain relief and on one occasion gave him the wrong medication completely.”
The spokesman confirmed such an incident had occurred in September 2015, adding that an external investigation had deemed the nurse’s actions unwise, but found there to be no malicious intent or abuse.
He added: “The patient was involved in the outcome and expressed that they were happy lessons could be learned.”
The former employee made several other allegations about the hospital, including that two patients were ‘kept in their rooms’, rarely coming out – an allegation the spokesman called ‘not true and offensive’.
“When any patient, on account of their specific illness and disability, rarely comes out of their room, we ensure that they have the highest level of nursing intervention and care,” he said.
Rebutting a further claim that patients with Korsakoff’s syndrome lacked specialist thereputic intervention, the spokesman described extensive provision for these patients, including weekly assessments from neuropsychiatrist Professor Simon Dein.
About the CQC report itself, Nouvita CEO Lance Adams said: “We were disappointed but analysed the findings and responded robustly with a series of actions to enhance the service to our patients and to ensure the quality and safety of care provision. This included recruiting an entirely new management team.
“A further inspection was carried out by the CQC in May 2016 and their feedback confirmed that we had made a number of improvements.
“We would like to take this opportunity to point out that there has been considerable debate about the CQC’s original assessment of the hospital, which was based on issues that have now been largely resolved. We supplied detailed rebuttals to many of the points raised by the inspection and worked with the CQC on this.”
Read the CQC report by searching for ‘Baldock Manor’ at cqc.org.uk.
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