Cygnet Hospital Beckton, in Tunnan Leys, was found to have breached safety regulations five times at an inspection by the Care Quality Commision (CQC) in December 2024.
The inspection – which looked into the hospital’s acute mental health ward, psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU), and two personality disorder wards – was sparked by concerns about an “increase in safety incidents” across the wards, according to the CQC.
A report published on June 13 gave the hospital a ‘requires improvement’ rating for the “safe” and “well-led” inspection areas for all wards, as well as a ‘requires improvement’ rating overall.
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Inspectors discovered “a number of issues” around safe care, staffing, and medicines management at all four wards.
The report said that, at the acute mental health ward and PICU, patients “did not always receive their medicines safely and as prescribed”.
This meant patients missed “critical” medicines – and when this happened “staff did not follow guidance to ensure that medicines were re-prescribed safely”, inspectors said.
The report added that rapid tranquilisation (RT) medicines were used to reduce patients’ aggression, but that staff did not always monitor patients’ physical health after administering these.
At the personality disorder wards, two carers told inspectors that their relatives had been sent home with the wrong medication and one added that the wards were “always running out of medication”.
Elsewhere in the report, concerns were raised by CQC about “shortfalls” in staffing and “low” completion of mandatory staff training in some areas.
However, since the inspection the personality disorder services have made improvement to its staffing numbers and therefore are no longer in breach of safety regulations in this area.
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All four wards were rated ‘good’ in the “effective”, “caring” and “responsive” inspection areas.
It said: “We found areas of good practice which included patients being supported to have choice and control of their care and treatment, able to provide feedback on their care, and a supportive and open team culture where learning was shared.”
A Cygnet Hospital spokesperson said it was “disappointed” with the CQC report.
They said: “Where inspectors found improvements were needed we immediately began to address these and have made significant progress towards this.
“Providing high quality, compassionate care for our service users is always our priority and we look forward to demonstrating the positive changes we have made at the next inspection.”
