Nursing home kept taking in residents following Hiqa inspection

A nursing home which had been prevented from permitting entry to new residents due to issues raised in previous Hiqa inspections was still allowing admissions, a report has found.

The Hiqa inspection report into Rochestown Nursing Home, Monastery Rd, Rochestown, Cork, found major non-compliances in governance and management, retention of documentation, and its complaints procedure.

There were some other moderate non-compliances and it fully met standards in three areas.

The report outlines how the unannounced inspection in July was the 16th visit to the facility, registered to deliver care to 22 residents.

It says the centre had “a history of non-compliance” and although there had been some significant progress, an inspection last January identified major issues.

“Because of evidence of ongoing and persistent non-compliances noted on the previous inspection, two further restrictive conditions were attached to the registration of the centre, one which outlined that no new residents were to be admitted to the centre, which came into effect on June 15, 2017,” it states.

“During this inspection, the inspectors saw that the condition which directed the registered provider not to accept any further admissions to the designated centre had been breached.”

The condition preventing any new admissions was implemented in June, but two residents were subsequently admitted for respite care.

Inspectors said engagement by the provider with Hiqa in recent months had been “unsatisfactory”.

They said insufficient staffing, highlighted in previous inspections, had not been properly addressed and there had been little improvement in other areas, including in fire training.

One impact of recruitment issues was its effect on quality assurance — for example, the person in charge tallied the weekly number of falls but was not allocated enough time to conduct more in-depth auditing.

Another problem, according to the report, was recently recruited staff members employed at the centre did not have evidence of Garda vetting.

The report states: “The person in charge was made aware this was a major non-compliance and informed the inspectors that staff were to be removed from duties until satisfactory vetting was in place.

“The inspectors also found that a number of staff files only had one reference and some staff did not have references from the previous employer. Gaps were seen in some CVs and inspectors identified, as they did on the previous inspection, that there were staff working in the centre without any staff files.”

Despite assurances the issues would be addressed, the report said these had not happened. “One newer member of staff commenced employment in May 2017 but management had not received Garda vetting clearance until a month later. This same staff member did not have any references on file,” states the report.

As for complaints, inspectors saw that the complaints policy at the centre had not been updated since the last inspection and that no new complaints had been recorded on the register since the last inspection.

However, after speaking with a number of residents, inspectors found complaints had been made to management, including one involving a resident whose property had gone missing the previous weekend.

An action plan was issued to assist the provider to address the problems raised during the inspection.