To ensure that a care home is signed up to receive all of the Central Alerting System (CAS) alerts, the care home will need to register for the system. The care home will the receive email notifications.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has issued guidance about compliance with the Health and Social Care Act 2008. Their registration system focuses on services meeting essential standards of quality and safety. This system is focused on outcomes, including the views and experiences of people who use the service. The implementation of CAS alerts is vital to ensure that care home resident’s safety is maintained to national standards.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) issue alerts on Medical devices, patient safety alerts and rapid response alerts ; which all require to be acted upon and actioned within required timescales.
Key Points:
The implementation of CAS alerts is vital to ensure that care home resident’s safety is maintained to national standards.
It is important to ensure that the email address used for the CAS alerts is one that can be accessed via a number of staff members. However information governance and data protection requirements must be adhered to.
Care homes should have a system to ensure emails are checked regularly (daily checks are recommended ), alerts are logged, screened for relevance, an action plan is developed when necessary, information is disseminated to staff and actions completed are documented.
Email safetyalerts@dh.gsi.gov.uk with the:
- name of the organisation
- first and last name of the recipient to receive the alert job title
- full postal address telephone
- email address
- fax number where available