Care UK rebuts allegations from ITV documentary

Company news

Jul 22, 2015

Care UK has strongly rebutted the allegations put to it in advance of ITV’s Exposure documentary.

ITV has refused to allow sight of any footage it has obtained by deception, but, while Care UK remains committed to investigating and learning from any incident or concern shown, it believes that overall the programme will misrepresent the NHS approved standards, assessment processes and targets used in an urgent care centre and will use selective comments, which individuals were misled into making, to give an inaccurate picture of urgent and out of hours NHS care.

The standards and process for assessing patients are safe and appropriate to the nature of the centre, and are conducted and measured in exactly the way set out by the NHS commissioners of the service. The particular patients which Care UK understands are referred to in the documentary were fully treated and discharged properly within the appropriate target time, remaining within the centre for entirely legitimate reasons, such as to collect medicines or await confirmation of future appointments.

A clinical safety review of Ealing Urgent Care Centre has been undertaken by senior NHS clinicians in response to ITV’s allegations and has confirmed that “there was no immediate action that needed to be taken to maintain patient safety” and state that the review team “were reassured by the responses given to our questions relating to patient safety and clinical governance”.