A DEMENTIA care home in Westbury has been ordered to improve its services by the Care Quality Commission after an inspection found it was underperforming in four out of five key care areas.

Westbury Court care home on Station Road has been told patients were being put at risk in areas of safety, effectiveness, responsiveness of staff and leadership, although it is providing ‘good’ care.

It is the second time the care home, run by Four Seasons Health Care, has been told improvements are required. An inspection in July 2014 made similar findings.

After the latest inspection in December, the CQC reported that while patients felt safe at the care home, it was not meeting the requirements of the law as medicines were not dispensed at the correct time and the timings of doses were not recorded.

Their report said: “On the day of our inspection the morning medication round on the first floor took nearly four hours to complete, and by the time it had finished the next round was almost due to start again.”

The home, which has received five complaints since August 2014, was also reported as not being well led, with much patient information being hard to locate in their records.

To rectify this, the home now has a permanent manager, Graham Oakes. The report did rate the care provided as ‘good’, with staff responding to requests for assistance within two minutes. The CQC confirmed that despite the care home being rated as “requires improvements” consecutively in two inspections, improvements had been made and staff were on the right track.

A CQC spokesman added: “We have made it clear where they need to make improvements and we will be monitoring with the local council to make sure that people are being looked after properly.”

A spokesman for Four Seasons said that since the inspection they have implemented an improvement plan while liaising with Wiltshire Council.

They added: “We are sorry that, at that time, some aspects of the care delivered did not meet the standards we expect all of our care homes to provide.

“We are encouraged that the inspectors acknowledged significant improvements had been made.”