Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The Health Centre Practice on 5 December 2016. The overall rating for the practice was ‘good’, with ‘requires improvement’ for providing well led services. The full comprehensive report on the 5 December 2016 inspection can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for The Health Centre Practice on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
We undertook an announced focused inspection on 11July 2017 to check that the practice had followed their action plan and to confirm they now met legal requirements in relation to the breaches in regulation that we identified in our previous inspection on 5 December 2016. This report covers our findings in relation to those requirements and also additional improvements made since our last inspection.
Overall the practice remains rated as good.
Our key findings were as follows:
- Patients with caring responsibilities were proactively identified so that appropriate support could be offered to them. After our previous inspection the provider had reviewed the numbers of carers and reiterated carers’ guidance and information via a carers information board and screen in the waiting room. A member of staff also had responsibility for providing information to carers and signposting them to organisations who were able to provide advice and support. The practice had 212 patients (1.8%) registered as carers, compared to 59 at the last inspection in December 2016.
- We reviewed the process for monitoring patients on high risk medicines and found that there was an effective procedure in place to ensure these patients received appropriate monitoring.
- At the December 2016 inspection we found that in the year prior only five out of 37 patients with a learning disability had attended for an annual health review. At our July 2017 inspection this number had remained low with seven out of 33 patients having undergone a health review in the past year. The practice advised us that a new nurse-led review procedure was due to be implemented imminently.
- There was a system in place to monitor progress with planned staff training to ensure that key training was kept up to date. The practice kept records of the registration and revalidation status of professional staff. The GPs and nurses were supported to address their professional development needs for revalidation.
- Blank prescriptions were kept secure at all times and tracked through the practice for their use.
- Any medicines incidents or ‘near misses’ were recorded and shared with the wider practice team to share any learning.
- There was an effective system for dealing with patient safety alerts, including alerts and updates from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.
- There were records to demonstrate the actions taken in response to infection control audits. However, the practice did not maintain effective cleaning schedules.
- Effective recruitment procedures were in place. The practice had successfully recruited a new clinician since our last inspection.
The areas where the provider should make improvement are:
- Review the systems used to complete annual health checks for patients with a learning disability.
- Maintain effective records that support the cleaning procedures in the practice.
Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)
Chief Inspector of General Practice