Private ambulance company EMC Medical told to improve by CQC

EMC Medical Services, based in Blewbury, near Didcot, has been warned that its safety, leadership and background checks on staff all need to be better.

The company, which provides patient transport services for councils, private patients and the NHS, has also been told it needs to improve its medicine storage techniques.

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The Care Quality Commission (CQC), the independent regulator of health and social care in England, visited the company on March 2 – after giving it 24 hours’ notice.

The inspectors judged EMC on whether its service was 'safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs, and well-led'.

They rated the company as ‘Requires Improvement overall’, highlighting that it needed to improve safety and suggesting it was not well-led.

EMC Medical is registered to this address in rural Blewbury. Picture: Google Maps

Writing their report, they said: “The provider did not have an effective system in place to identify, limit and control clinical and non-clinical risks.

"The managers were able to identify several risks, however, there was limited evidence to demonstrate the managers identified all service risks – including some we identified during our inspection.”

They went on: “The recruitment records did not provide assurance that all staff had the required employment checks completed before they commenced work.”

Inspectors also wrote: “Although medicines were stored securely, the patient group direction did not include pharmacist sign-off and medicine storage temperatures were not monitored.”

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EMC did, however, achieve a ‘good’ rating in other inspection categories, scoring highly in being 'responsive, effective, and caring'.

South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS), which serves Oxfordshire and neighbouring counties, has used EMC for years to transport thousands of patients.

Commercial services director Paul Stevens said that SCAS did not use EMC on 999 calls, but did use it – as well as other private ambulance hire companies – for non-emergency patient transport.

He went on: “SCAS has utilised EMC in this regard for several years, and last year EMC provided less than 0.2 per cent of the approximately 863,000 patient transport journeys SCAS provided.

“Since the last inspection, the trust is in contact with EMC regarding their CQC Action Plan to deliver the improvements that have been identified.”

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In 2019 the CQC published a report warning that there was a risk to patients' safety due to substandard care at private ambulance services.

The regulator stated that it had found 'pockets of good practice' but still 'remained concerned about the overall standard of care'.

The CQC previously inspected EMC in November 2018, and told the company then to ensure it had a system to assess, monitor and improve the quality and safety of its service and mitigate any risks.

The regulator has now said that the previous requirement notice has not been met and that EMC still requires improvement, but the company has said it is confident in its services.

A spokesperson said: “EMC Medical Services has recently been inspected by the CQC and have welcomed this opportunity to robustly analyse our systems and procedures, following a recent management restructure.

"We are pleased that we have been rated ‘Good’ in three of the five areas, which reflects the hard work and dedication of our crews and newly appointed managers.

“We equally welcomed the constructive feedback on areas for improvement and have implemented an action plan, subsequently resolving the identified points.

"We are now confident that these areas are ‘good’ with robust systems and procedures in place; we look forward to the next inspection.