SELHP

Updated 7 May 2019

SELHP is the location name of South East Lambeth Health Partnership Limited. This is one of two GP federations in the Lambeth area. Although the two organisations are separate entities, they are managed as one organisation and have the same board and Managing Director. The Federations represent the 42 practices in the Lambeth area who are all members of one of the two GP Federations.

SELHP provides GP an extended access clinic at one locations in the Lambeth area. This location is based at Vassall Road Medical Centre, 89 Vassall Road, Brixton, SW9 6NA. The location is a GP practice in its own right which hosts the services. The site provides appointments that may be accesses by all 42 practices and the local 111 service where appointments locally may not be available. During the inspection we visited the federation headquarters and the Vassall Road site. SELHP provides a number of other services in the Lambeth area that are not within the scope of CQC registration. This includes advising practices on how to improve the identification and management of conditions, and supporting practices which have been highlighted as requiring improvement by third party organisations.

SELHP has developed an accountability framework and a detailed assessment of what conditions either may or may not be referred to the service. For example, the service would not normally see patients who needed repeat prescriptions or those patients who might need onward referral.

The provider provides centralised governance for its services and management locally is the responsibility of service managers and senior clinicians. The service may be accessed by any of the 420,000 patients registered in the Lambeth area by appointment only. The service is complimentary to the services provided by the GP practices. Appointments are available between 2pm and 6pm.

The service is led by a managing director and a medical director who report to a board, which is made up of GPs based at member practices. They manage 12 back office staff who are involved in the management or support of the services. GPs and nurses who work at this service are taken from either a list of staff who have been contracted and trained by the service directly, or from locum agencies.

The service is registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide the regulated activities of family planning, treatment of disease, disorder or injury and diagnostic and screening services.

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?

Please note that when referring to information throughout this report this relates to the most recent information available to the Care Quality Commission at that time.

Updated 7 May 2019

This service is rated as Good overall.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at SELHP on 12 and 26 March 2019. We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the service was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

At this inspection we found:

• The service had good systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When they did happen, the service learned from them and improved their processes.
• The service routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. It ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence- based guidelines.
• Staff involved and treated people with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• Patients were able to access care and treatment from the service within an appropriate timescale for their needs.
• There was a strong focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation.

We saw one area of outstanding practice:

• The service had implemented systems that had reduced the rate of patients not attending appointments from 22% to 2%. They had shared the learning of how they had achieved this with other Federations and GP practices within the Lambeth CCG area.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• The service should ensure that it holds copies of risk assessments and checks undertaken by practices (or the owners of the buildings where practices are based) who host the extended access clinics.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP

Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care