An Ayrshire nursing home has been given extra time to make improvements to its quality of care following an unannounced inspection.
Fairknowe Care Home Service, in Maybole’s Cargill Road, was placed in the spotlight during a follow-up inspection by the Care Inspectorate.
This latest inspection focused on a requirement and areas for improvement made during the previous inspection in July 2024, and evaluated how the service had addressed these to “improve outcomes” for people.
According to the care scrutiny body they saw “warm and caring” relationships between staff and the people they support.
And a food focus group was being introduced to “support” people to be involved in menu planning.
However, there was a “continued need” to further improve the management of medication in the service.
Fairknowe House is registered to provide a care home service to a maximum of 40 older people who may have physical needs and or dementia. The service provider is Mead Medical Services Limited.
During an inspection earlier this year Fairknowe was graded ‘good’ across two quality indicators but merely ‘adequate’ across three others.
An extract from the latest inspection report said: “We assessed that there was a continued need to progress with meeting the requirement regarding medication management from the previous inspection in August 2024.
“Concerns remained about the safe and effective management of medication in the home. We have therefore restated this requirement with a new timescale.”
As a result bosses at the home have been given until 19 January 2025, extended from 13 October 2024, to improve the management of medication to ensure that people living in the service are “safeguarded” and that their health needs are “effectively met.”
The report adds: “We looked at records of medication administration and saw fewer gaps in records to indicate medication had been administered. However, there were some continued issues with record keeping and we noted that staff were not following best practice guidance.
“This included not completing handwritten entries into medication records in detail. This does not follow best practice and could lead to misunderstanding for the safe administration of medication and could impact negatively on peoples health.”