Background to this inspection
Updated
27 June 2019
Private GP Care Birmingham is located in the Smethwick area of Birmingham. It offers private GP services for a small transient patient population group. These patients are typically visiting the city from other parts of the country or from other countries.
The service occupies a single consulting room in a larger dentist facility. Private GP Care Birmingham is able to use the facilities throughout the building to support the delivery of care and treatment that they provide. There is one GP working at the practice, with cover provided by another GP when necessary.
The provider’s website is;
The provider offers a bespoke, seven days a week service dependant on patient need.
We inspected this provider on 30 April 2019 and our inspection team was led by a CQC lead inspector. The team included a GP specialist adviser
Prior to the inspection, we reviewed all information available including the provider website, the previous report, information provided to us by the provider and intelligence we gathered from other sources, including stake holders.
The method we used to inspect included being open to talking to people using the service and their relatives, interviewing staff, observations and review of documents.
To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we always ask the following five questions:
- Is it safe?
- Is it effective?
- Is it caring?
- Is it responsive to people’s needs?
- Is it well-led?
These questions therefore formed the framework for the areas we looked at during the inspection.
Updated
27 June 2019
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Private GP Care Birmingham on 30 April 2019. This was part of our inspection programme, in order to rate independent health services throughout England.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspected this service on 22 March 2018 and found breaches in regulation. As a result, we issued requirement notices as legal requirements were not being met and asked the provider to send was a report of the actions they were going to take to meet legal requirements. We checked these areas as part of the follow-up inspection on 25 July 2018 and found that these and found this had been resolved. The full comprehensive report of our previous inspections can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Private GP Care Birmingham on our website at
Private GP Care offered private GP services to a wide range of patients. The population group of patients were few in number and transient in nature.
This service was registered with CQC under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 in respect of all of the services it provided.
The main GP was the registered manager. A registered manager is a person who is registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.
Our key findings were
:
- Systems were in place to support the safety of patients and ensure patients were safeguarded from abuse.
- The provider demonstrated a program of quality improvement activities used to routinely review the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care provided.
- The provider ensured that emergency medicines and equipment were in place and that chaperones were available. The provider had updated their policy to include offering alternative appointments if chaperones were not available.
- The provider had established systems to support the gathering and analysis of patient feedback but was unable to demonstrate any feedback relating to how much patients felt involved in their care and treatment, or how satisfied they felt regarding access to care and treatment. We were told that this was due to the low numbers of patients seen.
The areas where the provider should make improvements are:
- The provider should continue to review systems to ensure that clinical waste is managed appropriately.
Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP
Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care