Background to this inspection
Updated
11 October 2018
Southgate Surgery (Southgate Medical Group) provides general medical services to approximately 9,593 registered patients. The practice delivers services to a slightly lower number of patients who are aged 65 years and over, when compared with the England average. Care is provided to patients living in residential and nursing home facilities and one local hospice.
Data available to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) shows the number of registered patients suffering income deprivation is similar to the national average. Care and treatment is delivered by three GP partners and three salaried GPs. Five of the GPs are female and one is male.
The practice employs a team of four practice nurses, two healthcare assistants and one phlebotomist. GPs and nurses are supported by the practice manager, a deputy practice manager, a practice coordinator and a team of reception and administration staff.
The CQC registered manager at the time of the inspection was Dr Anita Wilkinson. The Registered Activities are:
Diagnostic and screening procedures
Family planning
Maternity and midwifery services
Treatment of disease, disorder and injury
All services are provided from the location of:
137 Brighton Road
Crawley
West Sussex
RH10 6TE.
The practice is open from 8.30am to 6.00pm on weekdays. Extended hours consultations are available one evening per week from 6:30pm until 8:30pm and on one Saturday morning each month from 9.30am to 11.00am. The practice operates a flexible appointment system to ensure all patients who needed to be seen the same day are accommodated.
The practice uses the services of IC24 a local out of hours service. Further information on the practice and services provided can be found on their website, www.southgatemedicalgroup.co.uk
Updated
11 October 2018
This practice is rated as Good overall. (Previous rating May 2018 – Good)
The key questions at this inspection 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 Southgate Surgery on 21 February 2018. The overall rating for the practice was good. The practice was also rated good for the effective, caring, responsive and well-led domains and all the population groups. However, it was rated as requires improvement for providing safe services. The full comprehensive report on the February 2018 inspection can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Southgate Surgery on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
This inspection was an announced focused inspection carried out on 18 September 2018 to confirm that the practice had carried out their plan to meet the legal requirements in relation to the breach in regulations that we identified in our previous inspection on 21 February 2018.
This report covers our findings in relation to those requirements and also additional improvements made since our last inspection.
Overall the practice is now rated as good.
At our inspection of 21 February 2018, we found that:
- The provider had not ensured that accurate, complete and contemporaneous records were being maintained securely in respect of each service user. In particular: the contemporaneous patient’s records were not always up to date with patient information related to prescription changes.
At this inspection our key findings were as follows:
- The provider had a system for recording and responding to changes made to patient medicine prescriptions by secondary care clinicians. Accurate records were maintained and supporting documentation was scanned into the patient record as soon as practicable.
Additionally we saw that:
- The provider had a system in place for the collation of responses to Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) alerts and kept a central record that demonstrated the action taken. These were also discussed at practice meetings.
- The provider continued to review access to the service via the telephone system. A new suite of messages had been recorded to improve information for callers advising them to call at different times to call for results and general enquiries so that the core early morning hours were free for urgent and appointment booking calls. The practice had worked with the telephone provider to assess peak calling times so that staff could be redeployed as necessary.
- We were told that further work had been undertaken to provide additional appointments for under-fives. and additional minor illness appointments had been made available with increased capacity in the nursing team.
Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP
Chief Inspector of General Practice
Please refer to the detailed report and the evidence tables for further information.