Healthcare providers praised for services at HMP Hindley

Inspectors from the Care Quality Commission have produced a glowing report following a visit to the rehabilitation centre at the end of last year.

Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHS Trust, which provides around 700 prisoners with medical services, has been commended for addressing serious concerns raised after the last inspection in December 2017.

CQC officers said that despite not meeting the regulations in the last report, changes to staffing and a new approach to medicine administration, have resulted in a “significant improvement”.

They said: “At our last inspection we found that governance arrangements were not sufficient to monitor the service quality and safety.

“Arrangements to monitor infection prevention and control were not sufficiently robust. Staff did not report all incidents, and learning from incidents was not embedded into the service.

“There was limited patient engagement to improve the service. Prisoners had no access to pharmacists and there were no medicines reviews.”

In the 12 months in between inspections, the trust has has introduced a “new management structure” to help improve governance and risk management.

The trust’s reporting structure has also been changed in an attempt to improve monitoring of services at Hindley prison.

One of the major concerns for inspectors at the previous visit was a lack of pharmacy access for prisoners.

Two additional pharmacy technicians have since been recruited to support improvements in medicine management.

The most recent report, put together by two health and justice inspectors, states: “There were clear plans in place to provide further pharmacy input into HMP YOI Hindley.

“Local managers were working effectively with prison management to drive forward a range of improvements to prisoner health and

wellbeing.

“There was a range of engagement with patients to help improve the quality of the service and responses to patient surveys were positive about the service. Access to routine GP appointments was generally within two weeks.

“There had been a number of staffing changes in the pharmacy team and a lead pharmacist for the prison health service had oversight of pharmacy services at HMP YOI Hindley.”

The report comes just as a man has been jailed for trying and failing to smuggle drugs into the prison.