East Anglia Medical Care Ltd (Brockford Garage) is operated by East Anglia Medical Care Ltd. East Anglia Medical Care Ltd (Brockford Garage) is the location of rented office space and is the registered location of East Anglia Medical Care Ltd (EAMC). The service assesses and provides emergency medical treatment to visitors, staff and event participants at sporting events. The service has two emergency ambulances for the transfer of patients to hospital, one rapid response vehicle to transport patients from where they were injured at events to the medical tent, and one patient transport service vehicle which is used to transport volunteer staff to events.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out the short notice announced part of the inspection on 25th October 2018, along with a telephone interview with the registered manager on 2nd 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?

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

The main service provided was emergency and urgent care through the provision of first aid medical cover for weekend only sporting events. The service also transports patients from events to hospital in the event of a medical emergency. This falls under the scope of regulation.

Services we rate

Due to the limited regulated activity performed by this provider, we felt it to be disproportionate to rate the service.

We found the following areas of good practice:

• Vehicles were well equipped and stock was all in date.

• All staff and volunteers were up to date with all training.

• Policies and procedures such as incident reporting, safeguarding adult and children and duty of candour, were comprehensive, in date, and ready to support the service in anticipation of service expansion.

• Regular staff meetings were well documented with agendas and minutes and included shared learning and information.

However, we also found the following issues that the service provider needs to improve:

• There were no risk assessments for the volunteer staff who did not yet have a DBS check completed.

• The service did not have a set process to seek and receive feedback from service users.

• There was no process in place to check the dates of compressed gas, leading to some out of date oxygen and Nitrous oxide cannisters being available for use.

• There were infection prevention and control concerns including dusty equipment and surfaces in vehicles and ripped mattresses.

• There was no history of servicing of tail lifts for both emergency vehicles.

• Patient record forms were not always completed appropriately.

• There was a lack of awareness of Gillick competence for the treatment of young people.

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

Amanda Stanford

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals on behalf of the Chief Inspector of Hospitals