Updated
29 May 2025
iON Pinewood is operated by iON Ambulance Care Limited. It is an independent ambulance service located in Slough, Berkshire. iON Pinewood provides Patient Transport Services across the Southeast of England and Urgent and Emergency Care services under contract with a local NHS Ambulance Trust. iON Pinewood also provides ambulances and staff to support the local NHS ambulance services. It is registered with the Care Quality Commission for the regulated activities of transport services, triage and medical advice provided remotely and the treatment of disease, disorder or injury.
We inspected the Patient Transport Service and Emergency & Urgent Care due to receiving information of concern. We assessed a small number of quality statements from the safe, caring and well-led key questions and have combined the scores for these areas with scores from the last inspection.
We last inspected Patient Transport Service in 2022 where the service was rated as Good. We last inspected Emergency & Urgent Care in 2022 where the service was rated as Requires Improvement.
In our assessment we found there were concerns regarding the management of governance, including managers oversight of staff’s medicine management and how these were audited to ensure practice was monitored and safe. However, staff appeared to really care about patients, and they were suitably trained to care for them. The service had a good learning culture and people could raise concerns. Managers investigated incidents thoroughly using comprehensive systems to enable reviews. Staff understood and managed risks. The facilities and equipment met the needs of people. Vehicles were clean and well-maintained, however, in one instance we did observe expired equipment. There was appropriate knowledge and use of PPE.
Emergency and urgent care
Updated
16 May 2024
Date of assessment: 06 June 2024. We inspected the service due to receiving information of concern. We assessed a small number of quality statements from the safe, caring and well-led key questions and found some areas of concern. There were concerns regarding the management of governance, including managers oversight of staff’s medicine management and how these were audited to ensure practice was monitored and safe. However, staff appeared to really care about patients, they were suitably trained and the vehicles were clean and tidy.
The scores for these areas have been combined with scores based on the key question ratings from the last inspection. Though the assessment of these quality statements indicated areas of good practice since the last inspection, our overall rating remains requires improvement.
Patient transport services
Updated
16 May 2024
Date of assessment: 06 June 2024. iON Pinewood is operated by iON Ambulance Care Limited. It is an independent ambulance service located in Slough, Berkshire. iON Pinewood provides patient transport services (PTS) across the Southeast of England and urgent and emergency care services under contract with a local NHS Ambulance Trust. iON Pinewood also provides ambulances and staff to support the local NHS ambulance services with their patients’ transfer needs. It is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) for the regulated activities of transport services, triage and medical advice provided remotely and the treatment of disease, disorder or injury. We inspected the service due to receiving information of concern. We assessed 12 quality statements across safe, caring and well-led key questions.
At this assessment, we found the service was performing well and meeting expectations. We rated this service as Good because the staff were trained well and treated patients with care, vehicles were clean and tidy and there was a culture of continuous learning and improvement. However, there were mixed reviews from staff regarding how they felt valued by the management team.