Arley Medical Services is operated by

Arley Medical Services Ltd Headquarters

.

The service has one registered location at Unit 5a Arley Industrial Estate located in Arley and provides a range of public event first aid services and non-emergency patient transport. The scope of this inspection was focused on the conveyance of patients on an elective, non-urgent basis, and did not include first-aid event cover services; first aid event cover falls outside the scope of registration and so was not considered. The service has two vehicles which can be used for conveying patients.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out the announced part of the inspection on 6 April 2018. Due to the nature of the service, we did not conduct an unannounced inspection.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we ask the same five questions of all services: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs, and well-led? Where we have a legal duty to do so we rate services’ performance against each key question as outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate.

Throughout the inspection, we took account of what people told us and how the provider understood and complied with the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

Services we do not rate

We regulate independent ambulance services but we do not currently have a legal duty to rate them when they are provided as a single specialty service. We highlight good practice and issues that service providers need to improve and take regulatory action as necessary.

We found the following areas of good practice:

• There were appropriate processes and procedures for ensuring the delivery of safe, effective, high quality care. A range of local policies and procedures existed which staff were aware of however there was limited scope for the provider to assess compliance with such polices.
• The service was staffed and supported by a range of health-care professionals who were competent and knowledgeable.
• Patient record forms were used to record conveyances of patients. Telephone pre-assessments were carried out to ensure the condition of patients was appropriate prior to conveyance being agreed.
• The vehicles used were visibly clean and well maintained.
• There was evidence of learning having been implemented following the reporting of incidents. Staff were aware of their roles and responsibilities in regards to the reporting of, and learning from incidents.
• Individual staff members knew about their own professional accountabilities and responsibilities.
• The service was highly responsive to the needs of its patients. In part, this was because of the low levels of conveyances provided, which meant the provider was able to offer a flexible service to individual patients.

Following this inspection, we told the provider that it should make improvements, even though a regulation had not been breached, to help the service improve. Details are at the end of the report.

Heidi Smoult

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals (Central region)