Archived: Catherine Street Surgery

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We inspected Catherine Street Surgery on 13 November 2014 and visited the surgery in Whitehaven. We inspected this service as part of our comprehensive inspection programme.

Overall, we rated the practice as good, although there were some areas where the practice should make improvements. Our key findings were as follows:

• Patients reported good access to the practice, with urgent appointments available the same day.
• Patients said, and our observations confirmed, they were treated with kindness and respect by staff who worked in the practice
• Patient outcomes were generally at the average for the locality and good practice guidance was referenced.
• The practice was visibly clean and tidy.
• The practice learned from incidents and took action to prevent a recurrence.

We saw the following area of outstanding practice:

• The practice employed a co-ordinator to work with patients who were at risk of falls. The co-ordinator focused on patients who did not have input from other clinical services, for example Community Matrons or District Nurses. These patients were generally housebound and not regular attenders of the practice. The co-ordinator completed an assessment of their needs. If it was identified patients could benefit from changes to daily living, the co-ordinator would facilitate the change by working with other agencies. Re-assessments of people’s need would be completed by the co-ordinator after an agreed time to measure the impact of any changes made.

However, there were also areas of practice where the provider should make improvements.

• Patients were kept waiting in the practice to see a GP up to one hour beyond their allotted appointment times. We also found it was difficult for patients to get an appointment with the male (locum) GP or the GP of their choice, as their appointments were frequently fully booked.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

Catherine Street Surgery is located in a two storey building in the centre of Whitehaven. The practice has two female General Practitioners (GPs) and employ a male locum GP on a regular basis. In addition the practice employ two practice nurses, a health care assistant and administration/reception staff.

The provider was registered to carry out the following regulated activities:

- Diagnostic and screening procedures

- Maternity and midwifery

- Surgical procedures

- Treatment of disease, disorder or injury

We carried out the inspection as part of our new inspection programme to test our approach going forward.

Patients we spoke with told us they were happy with the care and treatment they received. However,some people told us they were unhappy with the length of time they had to wait when attending the practice for an appointment.

The provider had a robust recruitment policy in place which included carrying our relevant checks prior to new members of staff being employed. For example, reference requests and ensuring clinical staff were registered with the appropriate professional bodies.

We found the provider had processes in place to monitor the quality of care being delivered, however these were not followed by some staff members within the practice.