Mental Health Hospitals, Learning Disability Hospitals and Mental Health Act Monitoring Annual Report 2020-2021
Published 10 Nov 2021
The report sets out our activity and findings during the period from April 2020 to March 2021, and explores the extent to which mental health and learning disability healthcare services across Wales provided safe, dignified and least restrictive care during the pandemic.
During the year we carried out 8 onsite inspection visits;
| NHS Hospitals | 1 |
|---|---|
| Independent Hospitals | 7 |
We also undertook 33 digitally enabled Quality Checks;
| NHS Hospitals | 8 |
|---|---|
| Independent Hospitals | 15 |
We reviewed concerns from patients (151 reviewed), seeking further assurance where necessary. We also reviewed all regulation 30 and 31 notifications received (533 received) during the year, taking action where necessary.
The key findings from the year are:
- Infection prevention and control measures introduced in all services we checked.
- Care environments had been adapted to minimise risk of COVID-19 transmission. Despite changes being implemented to help reduce the spread of COVID-19, we were notified of a number of outbreaks of the infection which affected patients and independent healthcare staff. We were also aware of COVID-19 outbreaks in NHS healthcare settings.
- Maintaining a positive patient experience was challenging for some healthcare providers due to national and local COVID-19 restrictions, such as no leave of absence, no visits from friends or family and the requirement of social distancing and use of PPE.
- Risk assessments and care and treatment planning need improvement.
- Our work identified inconsistent management of ligature risks, such as action not taken to remove identified ligature risk points
- Staff have worked under significant pressure throughout the pandemic but healthcare providers must take action to recruit permanent staff to ensure safe and effective care.
Our 2019-2020 report is also available to read on our website.