England’s Chief Inspector of General Practice has rated Dr Khin Thanda (Avenham Health Centre), Preston as Inadequate and placed the practice into special measures following an inspection by the CQC in December 2016.
Under CQC’s programme of inspections, all of England’s GP practices are given a rating in five key areas: safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led. The practice was rated as Inadequate in all five of these areas.
Alison Holbourn, Deputy Chief Inspector of General Practice at CQC said:
“We found that people registered with Avenham Health Centre are not getting the high quality care which everyone should expect to receive from their GP and found significant areas of concern."
“It was worrying to see that comprehensive processes were not in place to keep patients safe, or the practice well run."
“It was also concerning that the attendance of patients from this practice at A&E units was high, with no evidence to demonstrate that the practice was working effectively to address this."
“We have told the practice where they must improve and are placing them into special measures to ensure that action will be taken to improve the quality of care for patients.”
A full report of this inspection has been published on the our website.
Some of the areas where CQC have told the practice they must improve:
- Ensuring that all staff receive training in infection control sufficient to support them in their role.
- They must implement effective improvement activity to reduce the numbers of patients presenting at accident and emergency units.
- Ensure the complaints process is accessible to all patients and keeping accurate records of all complaints.
- Learn from incidents involving patient care.
- Ensure all emergency medicines including oxygen are available for use.
- Ensure all cleaning systems and processes within the practice are correctly managed and maintained and that cleaning meets required standards.
- The practice must improve auditing and use the results to drive improvements in patient care.
- Ensure that all required recruitment checks are carried out and records of these are held.
The service will be kept under review and if needed could be escalated to urgent enforcement action. Where necessary, another inspection will be conducted within a further six months, and if there is not enough improvement we will move to close the service by adopting our proposal to remove this location or cancel the provider’s registration.
Patients registered with the practices being placed into special measures should be aware that a package of support is offered by NHS England and the Royal College of GPs to ensure that there are no immediate risks to patient safety at these GP practices whilst improvements are being made.
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For further information please contact CQC Regional Engagement Officer Kerri James by email kerri.james@cqc.org.uk or by phone on 07464 92 9966.
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We have told the practice where they must improve and are placing them into special measures to ensure that action will be taken to improve the quality of care for patients.
Alison Holbourn, Deputy Chief Inspector of General Practice at CQC