Elderly patients were at risk of Legionnaire’s disease for months after health inspectors ordered Heatherside Care Home to urgently improve their care and safety standards.

Care Quality Commission (CQC) outline a series of concerns with fire safety and medicinal practices throughout the care home in Hook, a recent report says.

However, their new management, argues that “99% of the corrections addressed in the report were corrected within the week” after the CQC ordered the fire service to address the concerns laid out in their report.

According to the CQC: “The provider had failed to assess, monitor and mitigate the risks relating to the safety of the service, service users and others.

“Audits had failed to identify concerns found in relation to the fire safety, legionella management, medicines management, staff requirement and supervision and appraisal arrangements.”

This highlighted ineffective conduct of fire drills including poor condition of fire doors in the building which had not been corrected following the previous assessment in March 2019.

The health care watchdogs across North Hampshire raised several risks for Legionnaires’ disease through improper water systems throughout the building that placed guests at risk of harm and required maintenance staff members to take a training course.

Another concern at the top of their list was poor documentation of prescribed creams which were being used on an ‘as required’ basis rather than regular prescription as stated by the pharmacist.

Manager of Heatherside Care Home, Steve Morton, 51, from Woking explained: “After we received the feedback from our CQC inspection we had a specialist company come in and readdress the fire doors in the building as well as a fire safety audit conducted by two inspectors.

He continued: “As of October 29, we were declared a safe care home by the fire brigade following our recent changes and we are working closely with the CQC to return to our original status by the next calendar year.”