Updated 28 June 2019
Community Medical Services Limited (CMS) is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) as an independent health provider based at Balance Street Health Centre in Uttoxeter. The organisation was established to continue a vasectomy service in the town providing an alternative to patients who would otherwise need to travel to a hospital.
The service is commissioned by Clinical Commissioning Groups in Staffordshire and South Derbyshire and provides approximately 120 vasectomies per annum. In addition, approximately one vasectomy is conducted per annum through a private referral received by the patient’s own GP.
CMS provide rooms to six consultants who offer a combined total of seven outreach clinics per month covering Colorectal, Gastroenterology, Orthopaedics, Urology and ENT (five contracts are direct with the consultants and one, Urology, is with Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust).
Two GP partners from Balance Street Health Centre conduct vasectomies. The majority are NHS funded services contracted with NHS East Staffordshire Clinical Commissioning Group. Operational delivery of the service works seamlessly with the co-located GP practice with four healthcare assistants, two of the GP partners and the practice manager who work for both provider services. The opening times are governed by the Health Centre opening times and four clinics per month are held on week days, predominately in the afternoon. In the event of out of hours contact vasectomy patients are also provided with the two GP partners telephone and email contact details.
We inspected Balance Street Health Centre on 11 June 2019 as part of our inspection programme. Our inspection team was led by a Care Quality Commission (CQC) Lead Inspector. The team included a GP specialist advisor. CMS provided information in advance of the inspection. We sent CQC comment cards two weeks prior to the inspection to gain feedback from patients. We spoke with staff from the service that included the lead GP and the practice manager.
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.