Station Lane Medical Centre

We carried out an announced focused inspection at Drs Meulendijk Soar & Brownlow on 15 January 2019 as part of our inspection programme.

At the last inspection in May 2018 we rated the practice as good overall, with a rating of requires improvement for providing safe services. The full comprehensive report regarding the May 2018 inspection can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Drs Meulendijk Soar & Brownlow on our website at .

The practice was rated as requires improvement for providing safe services because:

• A systematic and documented health and safety risk assessment which covered the operation of the practice had not been carried out.
• The significant event process showed some inconsistencies.
• There was limited assurance with regard to the effectiveness of management of the infection control audit process.

In addition to the areas for improvement identified under the key question of providing safe services, at the inspection in May 2018 we also said the practice should consider improving the following area:

• Review and improve the process of recording complaints, to include written and verbal complaints, in order to enable and improve the identification of any trends and learning from complaints within the practice.

At this inspection, we found that the provider had satisfactorily addressed these areas.

Our judgement of the quality of care at this service is based on a combination of what we found when we inspected, information from our ongoing monitoring of data about services and information from the provider and other organisations.

Overall the practice is rated as good overall, with the practice rated as good for providing safe services.

Our key findings were as follows:

• The practice had adopted a suite of health and safety risk assessments which had been embedded within the practice. In addition the practice had developed ‘ad hoc’ risk assessments which covered specific operations such as the installation of new public toilets.
• The practice had reviewed and updated their procedures with regard to the identification of significant events and had put in place measures to ensure that these were actioned and that learning from these incidents and events were shared with others.
• Issues identified in relation to the last infection prevention and control audit had been actioned. This included upgrades to the public toilets.
• The practice had begun to formally record both written and verbal complaints and from these were able to seek to identify any trends or themes.

There was one area where the provider should make improvement:

• Review and improve assurance in respect to confirming the immunity status of appropriate staff in relation to measles, mumps and rubella, and chickenpox.

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.