Skelmersdale Walk in Centre is operated by Virgin Care Services Limited. The service has approximately 2000 patient contacts per month. Approximately one fifth of patient contacts were children.

The service provides a walk-in and wait service for minor illnesses and minor injuries. We inspected urgent care services.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out the announced part of the inspection on 20 November 2018.

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 rate

Skelmersdale Walk in Centre had not previously been inspected. We rated it as Requires improvement overall.

We found areas of practice that require improvement in relation to urgent care services:

• The service did not always have someone on site who was competent to assess and treat children.

• We had concerns in relation to the level of life support training provided for staff.

• We found the service did not routinely audit practice against national guidelines and evidence-based practice.

• The service did not ensure processes were put in place to measure and monitor patient outcomes.

• The service did not ensure patient pathways complied with best practice guidance to ensure patient treatment was up to date.

• The service did not maintain an accurate and complete list of risks relating to the health and safety of service users.

However,

• Staff treated patients with compassion and respect.

• The service promoted a culture of openness and improvement. Staff were enthusiastic about delivering a high quality service focused on patient centred care.

Following this inspection, we told the provider that it must take some actions to comply with the regulations and that it should make other improvements to help the service improve. We also issued the provider with a requirement notice that affected the Sklemersdale Walk in Centre. Details are at the end of the report.

Ellen Armistead

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals (North)