Your hub for news and views on all issues affecting the health and care sector including regulatory updates, care home and domiciliary news, relevant case law and inquiries.
Our recent blogs have consistently focused on this developing saga as COVID-19 continues and as we as a nation compare ourselves to our counterparts, we are increasingly coming up short. There is a stark message coming through that our most vulnerable have been forgotten: the elderly in care homes, the detained in mental health units and those with learning disabilities.
Continue reading “Protecting the vulnerable in the midst of COVID-19”
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) established the Emergency Support Framework (ESF) to ensure the CQC could continue to practice its regulatory function in maintaining safety across health and social care settings. Although all routine inspections are currently on hold, the CQC aims to use the ESF for the purpose of collating information and intelligence from a number of sources to assist the CQC with issues such as monitoring risk, identifying where support is required and delivering safe care.
During yesterday’s daily Downing Street briefing, Matt Hancock was asked by the BBC about his party’s election manifesto promises concerning social care reform.
Prior to the December general election, the Conservative party manifesto promised to reform social care. Matt Hancock was asked at the briefing yesterday by the BBC whether the government was still planning a cap on care fees that have to be met directly, and whether he accepted that social care reform could not be put off again.
On 20 May 2020, the CQC published its first COVID-19 Insight document, said to be the first of its regular discussion documents on key issues affecting health and care.
The full document can be found here.
On 6 May it was announced that five residents had died at a care home on the Scottish island of Skye at the centre of a COVID-19 (C-19) outbreak on the island. 57 residents and staff at this care home have tested positive for C-19. Ten deaths have also recently been reported at a care home in East Dunbartonshire.
Statistics from the National Records of Scotland show that by Sunday 3 May there had been 2,795 deaths in Scotland where C-19 is mentioned on a death certificate. More than four in ten of those deaths (42.8%) have been in care homes. The proportion of deaths in care homes has also been growing, accounting for almost 60% of C-19 deaths between 27 April and 3 May.
As reported in our last blog, the Chief Coroner for England and Wales has recently provided updated guidance on inquests, commenting that in the contents of COVID-19, inquests are not a suitable forum to examine high level and government policy relating to the provision of personal protective equipment (PPE).
Continue reading “PPE for healthcare workers remains a troubling issue”
The Chief Coroner for England and Wales issued further guidance on 28 April 2020 in the form of guidance sheet number 37 addressing COVID-19 deaths and possible exposure in the workplace. This will be of significance to those involved in inquests or investigations relating to COVID-19 deaths.
He confirms that the vast majority of deaths from COVID-19 arise from the natural progression of this naturally occurring disease and therefore will not be referred to the coroner. He reminds his coroners of the Ministry of Justice guidance on the Notification of Deaths Regulations 2019 which confirms that a death is to be typically considered unnatural if it has not resulted entirely from a naturally occurring disease process, importantly it goes on, where nothing else is implicated.
Continue reading “Further guidance issued by HM Coroner – COVID-19 deaths”
