Archived: Staffordshire House

Updated 26 October 2018

Staffordshire House is part of the Vocare Group, recently acquired by Totally Plc. This service provides a GP led Out of Hours (OOH) service, known locally as Staffordshire Doctors Urgent Care (SDUC) and provides a service for a population of approximately 1,200,000 patients in Staffordshire. SDUC also provides the 24 hour NHS 111 service across the whole of Staffordshire commissioned under a separate contract to the OOH service (and registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) as a separate location). Vocare have approximately 2,000 employees and deliver GP OOH and urgent care services to approximately 9.2 million patients nationally. The population of Staffordshire includes the more deprived urban areas in and around Stoke-on-Trent as well as the more affluent areas in south Staffordshire with pockets of deprivation around Cannock, Tamworth and Burton upon Trent. The GP led OOH service is accessed through NHS 111, providing telephone triage and face-to-face consultations 24 hours a day to patients across Staffordshire. This service is based at the organisation’s headquarters at Staffordshire House, in Stoke-on-Trent. Staffordshire House provides OOH care between 6.30pm and 8am Monday to Friday. At weekends and bank holidays (b/h) the service provides 24 hour access. As part of the OOH service there are seven OOH sites which open at varying times and days; the locations are:

• County Hospital, Stafford (6.30pm to 8am, peripatetic site with Cannock)
• Cannock Chase Hospital (6.30pm to midnight week days, 8am to midnight weekends and bank holidays)
• Robert Peel Hospital, Tamworth (7.30pm to 11.30pm week days, 9am to 11pm weekends and bank holidays)
• Queen’s Hospital, Burton-on-Trent (6.30pm to 8am week days, 24 hours weekends and bank holidays)
• Staffordshire House (6pm to midnight week days, 8am to midnight weekend and bank holidays)
• Haywood Hospital, (6pm to midnight week days, 8am to midnight weekend and bank holidays)
• Royal Stoke Hospital (24 hour opening every day of the year)

The peripatetic model allows clinicians to be moved around the centres dependent on demand.

During our inspection we visited the headquarters in Stoke-on-Trent along with the OOH sites at Staffordshire House and at Robert Peel Hospital, Tamworth.

The service received approximately 128,000 contacts in 2017. On average, approximately half of these contacts are referred by the NHS 111 service (the service receives 900 referrals per week via NHS 111). Of these an average of approximately 40% are received on weekdays and 60% of contacts are made at weekends. The other pathways into the service are from accident and emergency (A&E), walk in centres, a direct healthcare professional telephone line, minor injuries and patients’ own GPs.

Further details can be found by accessing the provider’s website at www.sduc.nhs.uk 

Updated 26 October 2018

This service is rated as good overall. The previous inspection on 21 March 2018 rated the practice as requires improvement.

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

Following our comprehensive inspection at Staffordshire House on 21 March 2018 the location was rated as requires improvement for the Staffordshire Out of Hours (OOH) service with a requires improvement rating for the safe, effective, responsive and well-led key questions, good for the caring key question.

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection on 20 September 2018 to monitor that improvements had been made.

Our key findings from this inspection were as follows:

• We found improvements had been made to manage risks relating to delays in treatment being provided.
• The skill mix and staffing levels had been reviewed and we saw that safe care and treatment was now being provided in a timely way.
• There were effective systems and policies governing the health, welfare and safety of people. These included training for all staff who acted as chaperones and criminal checks on all staff.
• Systems for the management of medicines including controlled medicines were comprehensive and effective. Prescriptions were securely stored and their use was monitored.
• The recruitment of new personnel into the governance team had strengthened arrangements and supported an overarching governance framework for systems and processes.

The provider had recruited and trained associated healthcare professionals and reduced the dependence on GPs.

• Patients’ care needs were seen to be assessed and delivered in a timely way according to their needs. The service had improved performance against the Local Quality Requirements which monitored clinically effective and responsive care. For example, home visit response times showed sustained improvement and achieved contractual targets for the past three months.

There was one area of the service where we recommended that the provider should make improvements:

• Continue to improve the evidence to support that mandatory training has been completed by GPs.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGPChief Inspector of General Practice