Patients at an urgent care centre in south Bristol waited up to three and a half hours to be assessed for treatment at the end of last year because of the Covid-19 pandemic, an inspection found.
South Bristol Community Hospital is run by private company Sirona Care and Health, which was inspected by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in November and December 2021.
A routine inspection of its community inpatient and urgent care services found that safety in the facilities "requires improvement". As well as the community hospital in south Bristol, Sirona runs a number of other core health services across the city, as well as in North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.
Read more: Bristol council could close rehab centre despite hospital pressures
Sirona is the sole provider of NHS and local authority funded adult and children’s community healthcare services in the region. The services inspected were rated "good" overall, and Sirona said it has put an action plan in place to solve any problems.
But the CQC's report found that Sirona's system to identify critically ill patients "was not working effectively", which left patients "at risk of deteriorating because they had not been clinically assessed". An inspection of the urgent care centre found that some patients waited more than three hours to be assessed, or "triaged", after they registered at reception.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine recommends that patients are assessed within 15 minutes of their arrival. But on the day of the inspection, patients waited up to 70 minutes for assessment - almost five times longer than recommended.
Read more: Covid cases in Bristol region rise above 1,000 for first time in days
And inspectors also saw records which showed that an adult with chest pain had recently waited three and a half hours before being assessed by a nurse. The report said: "When the patient was examined their condition had deteriorated and they required an ambulance to take them to an emergency department."
The hospital's records also showed that an infant with a head injury had waited two hours before being clinically assessed. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health says that children should have a detailed physical assessment within 20 minutes.
The report added that the delays were caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the increased pressure it put on health services. It said: "While the urgent care service had the required staff numbers for the contract to care for patients and keep them safe, the increased demand on the service due to the pandemic meant that staff were not always able to see patients in the required timescales to keep them safe."
It added: "Staff at the urgent care services did not consistently assess risks to patients in a timely manner." The report also noted that managers and staff told inspectors that there was an increase in aggression towards staff throughout the pandemic, which "impacted staff morale" as the "levels of aggression were high".
Janet Rowse, chief executive of Sirona care and health, said: “We were pleased our services were rated as good overall and outstanding for caring but as with all inspections there are naturally recommendations to help us improve. We have an action plan in place to address the areas identified by the Inspectors to ensure consistency across our Urgent Care services.
"I am immensely proud of our staff and the way they have worked through the pandemic and that the CQC recognised the increased demands Covid-19 brought for NHS services which has, unfortunately, meant from time to time people have needed to wait longer than we would like.”
Follow the latest updates on this story and others like it here
Read more: Battle to save South Bristol Rehab Centre from closure heats up
Also read: Council to stop housing families with kids at Imperial Apartments
