We inspected this service on 14 and 15 March 2017as part of our programme of comprehensive inspections.

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?

Throughout the inspection, we took account of what people told us and how the service 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. We highlight good practice and issues that service services need to improve and take regulatory action as necessary.

We found the following areas of good practice:

• Patient transport services (PTS) were managed in line with current standards and legislation, and staff had the skills to carry out their roles effectively, and in line with good practice.
• There were systems to communicate learning from incidents and complaint outcomes
• The service met the needs of patients it transported as was clear from their feedback.
• We saw staff treating and caring for patients with compassion, dignity and respect.
• Staff adhered to good infection prevention and control practice.
• Vehicles were maintained to a high level of cleanliness and servicing was seen to be effective, timely and accurately documented.

• PTS services were mainly pre booked to ensure sufficient resource could be allocated to each job, taking account of individual patient’s needs.

• Patient booking forms were stored appropriately and audited to ensure good completion by staff.

• At booking stage, the dispatchers collected all relevant information on patient needs:  mobility, the type of vehicle needed and any equipment required, as well as whether a nurse or carer would accompany the patient.
• The service was performing well against its contractual key performance indicators (KPIs).
• There was close and effective coordination with the hospitals that HATS worked for. The attendance of HATS staff at bed meetings was excellent practice.
• Staff feedback was collected and used in service development, and it was clear from staff comments that that the service valued their staff.

However, we also found some issues that the service needed to improve, all of which were corrected very soon after inspection:

• Safeguarding training had a bias towards child protection. Following the inspection the service revised their training to cover safeguarding vulnerable adults in greater depth and arranged for all staff to have this training by the end of April 2017.
• The vehicle daily checks did not include checking tyre inflation pressure. The service added tyre pressure monitoring caps to all their vehicles shortly after the inspection and had added this check to the daily vehicle checklist.
• We saw three small oxygen cylinders stored, unsecured, within the office area of at St Pancras hospital. The service responded promptly and provided secured storage for these within days of the inspection.

Professor Edward Baker

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals