Southport and Formby Health Limited

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 The Family Surgery on 28 June 2022. The inspection was carried out as part of our inspection programme. This was the first inspection of the service since it was registered with CQC.

This service is registered with CQC under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 in respect of some, but not all, of the services it provides. There are some exemptions from regulation by CQC which relate to particular types of activities and services and these are set out in Schedule 1 and Schedule 2 of The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. The family Surgery provides a number of services which are not within CQC scope of registration. Therefore, we did not inspect or report on these services.

The Family Surgery provides a GP extended access service to patients who are registered in GP practices within the Southport and Formby Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) locality. The provider 'Southport and Formby Health Limited' also provides a community cardiology service for assessment and diagnosis of patients with a non-urgent suspected cardiac condition. Treatment/management plans are then provided to patients if required. The provider is also collaborating with the GP practices in Southport and Formby Primary Care Network (PCN) to deliver elements of the PCN contract. These include: an enhanced care home service where nurses provide assessment, monitoring and care planning for patients living within a care home setting and a community pharmacist service providing medicines management support.

The medical director for the service is 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:

• The service provided care in a way that kept patients safe and protected them from avoidable harm.
• Patients received effective care and treatment that met their needs.
• Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care.
• The service organised and delivered services to meet patients’ needs. Patients could access care and treatment in a timely way. The provider responded to the COVID-19 pandemic through the provision of three sites where patients with symptoms could access GP services.
• Staff reported a good culture and effective systems were in place for quality control and governance.

We saw the following outstanding practice:

The provider had adapted services in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to provide three sites across the Clinical Commissioning Group locality where patients who had symptoms of COVID-19 or required a face to face GP appointment could be seen by a clinician. They also provided a home visiting service so that patients who were housebound or shiedling could be seen in their own home. This took some of pressure from the GP practices within the locality. Feedback we received about how the provider had responded and the impact this had had within the locality was highly positive. The provider had mobilised the service with speed and had worked in collaboration with other agencies.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP
Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care.