Patient left four days without correct medication at under-staffed care home

Priory Gardens, which caters for up to 72 elderly residents, including some with dementia, has been rated inadquate by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Inspectors said that while nursing staff were “kind and considerate” towards patients, there were not enough of them to deliver a safe level of care.

It meant that relatives often helped at the home themselves on a voluntary basis.

A report by inspectors who visited the home, on Lady Balk Lane, in May, said that this often led to problems with patients’ medicines and that the home had no registered manager in place.

They said: “We found medicine management was not safe. We found people had not always received their medicines as prescribed. One person told us, “My tablets are usually late.”

“We saw one person was prescribed three steroid tablets to be given in one dose daily. The medication administration record (MAR) showed the person had only been given one tablet over a four day period. This meant the person had not received the correct dose of their medicine for four days.”

The CQC said that the home had not had a registered manager in place since December 2017 leaving staff “unsettled and upset”.

The report added: “We found significant concerns with staffing levels as people had to wait for attention or we found relatives were substituting care provision as they observed how busy staff were.”

Priory Gardens is the seventh care home in the Wakefield district to have been rated inadequate this year.

It now has six months to improve or face closure.

The home is run by HC One, which also runs Carr Gate and Snapethorpe Hall care homes in Wakefield.

A spokesperson for the company said: “The safety and wellbeing of Residents is always our number one priority, and we take all feedback from the Care Quality Commission very seriously.

“Following the CQC’s inspection in May, we took immediate action to address the challenges they have highlighted and we have made very positive progress over the last three months.

“We have appointed a new and experienced home manager, who will provide strong leadership within the home, as assigned dedicated care teams to each floor of the home so we can provide greater continuity of care.

“We continue to work closely with the relevant authorities to make and sustain improvements, and we are confident we will have made significant positive progress by our next inspection.”