A care service in Oxford has received a critical report by a watchdog due to mismanagement of medicines and keeping people safe from potential abuse.

This report comes after a previous inspection in October 2022 when one patient was found at risk of an overdose.

Kwikfix Recruitment Services' Oxford branch was found in breach of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 for a second time by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

The CQC carries out regular inspections of health and social care providers to ensure they meet the required standards.

Kwikfix is a domiciliary care agency that provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats.

The inspection was a follow-up to a warning notice Kwikfix received after CQC's previous visit when the provider was rated ‘requires improvement’, the second lowest rating possible.

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The report found that the care provider had not implemented all the actions suggested after the first inspection.

The inspector raised concerned that people’s medicines support needs had not been adequately reviewed and that improvements were required when learning from accidents.

The report said: “At the last inspection we found that time specific medicines were not documented in one person's documentation.

 “This put this person at risk of potential overdose.

 “At this inspection, we found that although the care plan had been updated to reflect that they took time specific medicines, it did not identify what medicine this was, or the risk associated with this.

“The service had not ensured that information around how to support people to safety manage their medicines was safe.

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Regarding risk management, the report said: “At the last inspection, we saw that there was limited documentation to investigate incidents this posed a potential risk of harm to the service user.

“There was now a tracking document in place which logged incidents, accidents and safeguarding concerns.

“We reviewed individual accidents and incidents and did not always see appropriate actions or outcomes documented.

“We were not assured that improvement had been made to prevent further occurrences of incidents or that appropriate action was taken.”

The report went on to say Kwikfix’s Oxford branch had nevertheless made significant improvements with regard to staff knowledge, training and guidance.

It added that staff were found to have a good understanding of people’s needs and the support they required.