- Ambulance service
ION Pinewood
Report from 16 May 2024 assessment
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
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.