West Kent Primary Care Clinical Services

Updated 30 May 2022

The Registered Provider is West Kent Primary Care Community Interest Company. Services are provided from:

• Hospice in the Weald, Maidstone Road, Pembury, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, TN2 4TA.

Services are provided by two GP’s, as well as eight nurses and an administration team.

Patients with a diagnosis of long-term Covid who still have symptoms after four to 12 weeks after a positive test, can be referred by their own GP to the Covid assessment/case management service. There is a tailored assessment framework in use. Pre-referral checks/tests must be completed by the GP or secondary care, before referrals to the service can be made. For example, Covid test results, blood tests, chest x-rays, frailty assessments, fitness to work assessments, cardiac risks/ and electrocardiogram (ECG). After the referral is received, the patient submits a questionnaire, which is then triaged. An assessment (either by video or telephone consultation) is then completed with the patient. Services are provided to patients aged 18 years or over. Where appropriate, patients are then discussed at twice weekly multi-disciplinary team (MDT) meetings, the outcome of which will be onward referral to an appropriate healthcare professional. For example, ear, nose and throat (ENT), neurology, cardiac, outpatients, respiratory specialists or for pulmonary rehab. Some patients may also be discharged back to their own GP, via an app called ‘Your Covid Recovery’. (An app is an application, downloaded by a user to a mobile device).

Opening times are Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, with some flexibility for patients who work during these hours (up to 6pm upon prior arrangement). The service does not provide emergency telephone support out of hours and has a referral arrangement with the patient’s own GP service should additional support be required.

How we inspected this service

Throughout the pandemic CQC has continued to regulate and respond to risk. However, taking into account the circumstances arising as a result of the pandemic, and in order to reduce risk, we have conducted our inspections differently.

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site. This was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements.

This included:

• Conducting staff interviews.
• Requesting evidence from the provider.
• A short site visit to the service.

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 2022

This service is rated as Good overall.

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

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at West Kent Primary Care Covid Virtual Ward on 3 May 2022. The service was newly registered with CQC on 18 May 2022 and this inspection was undertaken to provide a rating for this service.

West Kent Primary Care Covid Virtual Ward is a federation of doctor-led services, contracted by the local clinical commissioning group (CCG) to provide remote (virtual) initial assessment and ongoing case management (if required) of patients diagnosed with long-term Covid.

The Chief Executive Officer is the registered manager. A registered manager is a person who is registered with CQC to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

The service is registered with CQC to provide the following regulated activities: Treatment of disease, disorder or injury and Diagnosis and screening.

Our key findings were:

• Policies and procedures were comprehensive, up to date and relevant to the service.
• All staff had the appropriate level of training for safeguarding adults and children, relevant to their role and staff training in other mandatory subjects was effective.
• Consent was recorded appropriately for each contact with the patient.
• Patient feedback was positive about their care experience.
• The service was supportive of patients’ needs and patients were able to access the service.
• There was clear leadership and leaders had the capacity and skills to deliver high-quality, sustainable care.
• The provider had effective processes for planning of the future leadership and workforce of the service.
• Governance arrangements were implemented effectively.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP
Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care