Archived: FarleyMed

Updated 30 May 2019

FarleyMed is located in the grounds of Farley Hall in Berkshire. The medical facility is secluded from the main building which offers confidentiality to patients. There is a main waiting area a clinical room and a nurse treatment room.

FarleyMed services are provided by Dr The Viscountess Bearsted from the following address:

Farley Hall

Castle Road

Farley Hill

Reading

RG7 1UL

There is one GP (the sole provider) and a practice nurse who works on Tuesdays, Thursdays and occasional Saturdays, when required. In the preceding two years the GP has reduced the number of GP services and has had no face-to-face consultations for at least 18 months. Any requests for GP services from new or existing patients are responded to with signposting to other local providers. The GP oversees the vaccination and immunisation service and offers clinical support and guidance to the nurse when required.

The nurse provides a number of services including; vaccination and immunisation clinics, Spirometry, electrocardiograph testing, Cervical screening, phlebotomy, ear syringing and general nurse consultations.

Patients can access the service by telephone or email. Details of the services offered and how to contact them can be found on the service website: www.farleymed.co.uk

Opening times are flexible and can include evenings and weekends if required by the patient. The service does not offer home visits or an out of hours service. Patients are asked for their NHS GP details at the point of consultation and are encouraged to see their own GP out of hours service if required.

The service is registered with the CQC to provide treatment of disorder, disease or injury and diagnostic and screening procedures.

During the inspection we spoke with the sole provider GP and the practice nurse. We also viewed documents and made observations of the facility. There were no patients accessing the service on the day of the inspection for us to speak with and there had not been any patients to complete CQC comment cards within two weeks of the inspection.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we always ask the following five questions:

• Is it safe?
• Is it effective?
• Is it caring?
• Is it responsive to people’s needs?
• Is it well-led?

These questions therefore formed the framework for the areas we looked at during the inspection.

Updated 30 May 2019

This service is rated as Requires improvement overall. This was the first inspection of this service using our current methodology.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Requires improvement

Are services effective? – Requires improvement

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Requires improvement

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at FarleyMed as part of our inspection programme.

FarleyMed is an independent GP and nursing service located near the town of Reading, Berkshire. The GP service had been reduced in the preceding two years and there had been no face-to-face GP consultations for 18 months. Patients requesting a GP consultation were signposted to other local GP services.

There were no patients accessing the service on the day of the inspection for us to speak with and there had been no patients in the two weeks prior to the inspection for us to collect comment cards from. We reviewed feedback from the provider to make our judgement.

Our key findings were:

• Safeguarding systems kept patients safe and safeguarded from abuse.
• There were systems and processes in place to manage risk, although not all risks had been appropriately identified in relation to infection control and emergency processes.
• The service ensures that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence based research or guidelines.
• There was no established system to review the training requirements of the nurse and they had not received an annual appraisal.
• Quality improvement activity, such as clinical audit, was not established or embedded.
• Patient feedback to the service was positive and patients were satisfied with their care and treatment.
• The culture of the service encouraged candour, openness and honesty.
• Governance arrangements for identifying and responding to risk required a review.

The areas where the provider must make improvements as they are in breach of regulations are:

• Ensure care and treatment is provided in a safe way to patients.
• Establish effective systems and processes to ensure good governance in accordance with the fundamental standards of care.

(You can see full details of the regulations not being met at the end of this report).

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP

Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care