A MENTAL health hospital in Barnt Green has been placed in special measures following an inspection from the Care Quality Commission.

The care watchdog has prevented the Priory Barnt Green from admitting further patients after the inspection in June and all patients have been moved out.

The report, published on September 16, found the service did not protect people from avoidable harm because it lacked enough staff with the right training to ensure their safety.

CQC inspectors identified instances where staff were sleeping while they should have been observing patients, and there was an instance of a person self-harming while a member of staff was asleep on duty.

Following the inspection, CQC rated the hospital inadequate overall and for being safe, effective and well-led. It also rated it requires improvement for being caring and responsive to people’s needs and placed it in special measures.

Inspectors did find the hospital to be clean and well-maintained, and staff were praised for taking appropriate steps to protect people from COVID-19.

Priory Barnt Green had ten beds for women needing psychiatric intensive care and remains in special measures. It will not be allowed to admit people again unless CQC is assured it can meet their needs.

Priory Healthcare Limited, which runs the hospital, decided to close the ward and transfer all the hospital’s patients to other services following the unannounced inspection.

Jenny Wilkes, CQC head of inspection for mental health and community health services, said: “Our inspection of Priory Barnt Green found the service was not ensuring people’s safety.

“It had a shortage of staff with the right training and experience to ensure people received the safe care they have a right to expect. People also reported that some interactions they had with staff were unsupportive and lacked respect.

“Staff failed to undertake adequate observations of people, including to ensure they had not come to physical harm following rapid tranquilisation and as part of routine checks to monitor people at risk of self-harming.

“Behind this was as lack of oversight from leaders whose understanding of the service was impeded by a failure to capture information following patient safety incidents. This insight should have been used to help the service improve the quality and safety of care it provided for people.

“No one is currently using the service and we will not give approval for it to admit patients again unless we are assured it can take all reasonable steps to manage risks to their health and wellbeing.”

A hospital spokesperson from Priory Healthcare Limited, said: “Prior to the CQC’s visit, we conducted our own inspection and identified issues, particularly around staffing, which were being addressed. Unfortunately, however, a shortage of mental healthcare staff nationally, and dependency on agency, meant we remained unable to recruit or retain the qualified, permanent staff needed for a patient group with highly complex needs.

"A senior management team was put in place to support the hospital, and we decided to halt admissions and close the hospital, working closely with commissioners to ensure the safe and swift transfer of patients to alternative placements. Priory takes the quality of its services extremely seriously; nearly 83% of our CQC-registered mental healthcare sites in England are ‘good’ or outstanding. This is higher than the national benchmark, and significantly higher than for the independent mental health sector as a whole (77%). Where appropriate, qualified staff at the site have been redeployed to other Priory sites.”