England’s Chief Inspector of General Practice has rated Garden Park Surgery as Inadequate and placed the practice into special measures following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
Under CQC’s new programme of inspections, all of England’s GP practices are being inspected and given a rating.
A specialist team of inspectors rated Garden Park Surgery, Wallsend, North Tyneside, as Inadequate for providing services that were safe, effective, well led, Requires Improvement for being caring and Good for being responsive to people’s needs. Overall, this surgery has been rated as Inadequate and placed in special measures.
The practice inspection in April 2016 was led by a CQC Lead Inspector. The team included a GP specialist advisor, a specialist advisor with experience of GP practice management and a member of staff from the CQC administrative team.
We were concerned about the inadequate systems and processes in place to keep patients safe including significant concerns in relation to medicines management and infection control arrangements.
There was insufficient evidence that the practice carried out assessments and treatment in line with relevant and current evidence based guidance and standards, including National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) best practice guidelines.
Although staff understood their responsibilities to raise concerns, and to report incidents and near misses, when things went wrong, lessons learned were not communicated widely enough to support improvement.
A full report of this inspection has been published on the CQC website today.
Sue McMillan, Deputy Chief Inspector of General Practice said:
“It is important that the people who are registered at Garden Park Surgery can rely on getting the high quality care which everyone is entitled to receive from their GP.
“Although some people told us staff were caring and treated patients with dignity and respect, the service had failed to ensure staff were appropriately recruited, and safe to work with patients. Action must also be taken to address the wider concerns we identified about outcomes so that patients receive safe, high-quality primary care.
“I do not believe that the practice is likely to resolve its challenges without external support. This is why we are placing the practice into special measures.
“After a period of six months we will inspect again to check whether sufficient improvements have been made. If we find that the service provided by this practice remains inadequate, we will consider taking steps to cancel its registration with CQC.”
Patients registered with the practices being placed into special measures should be aware that the package of support being offered by NHS England and the Royal College of GPs will ensure that there are no immediate risks to patient safety at these GP practices whilst improvements are being made.
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