- Prison healthcare
HMP Thameside
We served a warning notice on Practice Plus Group Health and Rehabilitation Services Limited on 27 February 2025 for failing to meet the regulations relating to the safe care and treatment of service users at HMP Thameside. The provider had failed to ensure service users received safe care and treatment, that their records contained all relevant information, that they received the correct medication and on time and that they discharged service users to other organisations safely.
We served a warning notice on Practice Plus Group Health and Rehabilitation Services Limited on 27 February 2025 for failing to meet the regulations relating to good governance at HMP Thameside. Governance meetings were not effective and there were no suitable processes in place to manage or monitor internal and external hospital appointments as well as other clinical tasks and the audit function did not help improve services.
Report from 25 February 2025 assessment
Contents
Judgements
Our view of the service
HMP Thameside is a reception and resettlement category B establishment. Practice Plus Group (PPG) is the healthcare provider at HMP Thameside. We carried out a joint inspection with HMIP in February 2025. At the same time we also carried out a focussed inspection of healthcare services provided by PPG at HMP Thameside to follow-up on concerns identified during a focussed inspection which took place in January 2024. At this inspection we found the provider had made limited progress towards a safe service for patients. Since the last inspection there had been a high turnover of staff including at local leadership level. The provider had recently put a transformation team in place to improve the functionality of the service based on more recent concerns. We found the provider remained in breach of 2 regulations; safe care and treatment and good governance. We also identified a further breach of regulation for complaints. We do not currently rate services provided in prisons. At this inspection we found: Governance was weak as identified risks were not followed up promptly and accurately. Learning from incidents was not well embedded and incidents were not consistently reported. Patient complaints were not dealt with promptly or effectively. Staff, including new staff, did not receive regular supervision. Individual risk to patient safety was not well managed within the service or when patients were transferred to other services; and patients did not always receive their correct medicines on time. Patients were not triaged promptly and care was not always provided in a safe way. Patient records lacked pertinent information. We also found: There was a new rapid assessment process which had been partially implemented for the healthcare reception process. A meeting for patients with complex health needs was well attended and there was an improvement in reporting safeguarding concerns. A turnaround team had been brought in to direct and improve the service.
People's experience of this service
Most of the patients we spoke with during the inspection told us that they were disatiied with the standard of healthcare. Patients told us it took a long time to be seen by the healthcare team and all of the patients we spoke with complained about their medicines being late or not receiving them. Most patients told us that healthcare staff were friendly and helpful when they were able to see them.