The Care Quality Commission
  • Doctor
  • GP practice

Crawcrook Medical Centre

Overall: Requires improvement read more about inspection ratings

Pattinson Drive, Ryton, Tyne and Wear, NE40 4US (0191) 413 5473

Provided and run by:
Reimagining General Practice GPMS Services Ltd

Important: The provider of this service changed. See old profile
Important: The provider of this service changed. See old profile

All Inspections

During an assessment under our new approach

Date of Assessment: 25 February 2025. Crawcrook Medical Centre is a GP practice and delivers services to 20,421 patients under a contract held with NHS England.

The practice has branch surgeries at:

  • Rowlands Gill, The Grove, Rowlands Gill, NE39 1PW
  • Blaydon, Shibdon Road, Blaydon, NE21 5NW
  • Grange Road, Grange Road, Ryton, NE40 3LT

The practice is situated within the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB). This is part of a contract held with NHS England which is an Alternative Provider Medical Services (APMS) contract.

The provider of the service is Reimagining General Practice GPMS Services Ltd which is owned by a GP and a non-clinical manager both acting as chief medical officer and chief executive. The GP is the CQC registered manager.

According to the latest available data, the ethnic makeup of the practice area is 97.6% White, 0.9% Mixed, 0.8% Asian, 0.3% Black and 0.4% Other. Information published by Public Health England shows that deprivation within the practice population group is in the eighth lowest decile (8 of 10). The lower the decile, the more deprived the practice population is relative to others. This assessment considered the demographics of the people using the service, the context the service was working within and how this impacted service delivery.

The practice’s opening hours are Monday to Friday 8am to 6pm.

There were out of hours arrangements in place at the practice and other local practices, evenings and Saturday. Out of hours services are provided via the NHS 111 service.

The last comprehensive inspection of this service took place in August 2023, when it was rated as requires improvement overall and for the key questions well led and responsive. The key questions safe, effective and caring were all rated as good. We carried out this assessment on 25 February 2025. The reason for the assessment was in response to the previous inspection which rated the responsive and well led key questions as requires improvement. The key questions safe, effective and caring were not re rated.

The service has been rated as requires improvement overall and requires improvement for the key questions of responsive and well led.

We found a breach of the legal regulations in relation to governance.

Whilst there have been some improvements since our previous inspection these were more recent and therefore insufficiently embedded to be illustrated in the available data, particularly with patient access to the service. There also remains some concerns around the culture of the provider resulting in reported poor staff retention, particularly administration staff, higher workloads, lack of staff input into vision and values, lack of visibility of senior leaders and lack of awareness of complaints and learning for the practice.

We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at this assessment.

17 and 31 August 2023

During a routine inspection

We carried out an announced comprehensive at Crawcrook Medical Centre on 17 and 31 August 2023. Overall, the practice is rated as requires improvement.

Safe – good.

Effective – good.

Caring - good

Responsive - requires improvement

Well-led - requires improvement

The full reports for previous inspections can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Crawcrook Medical Centre on our website at www.cqc.org.uk

Why we carried out this inspection

This inspection was a comprehensive inspection, we have carried out this inspection because the practice has reregistered with us as a new provider of GP services for this location. We also received information of concern regarding this provider.

How we carried out the inspection/review

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site.

This included:

  • Conducting staff interviews using video conferencing.
  • We issued questionnaires to staff.
  • Completing clinical searches on the practice’s patient records system (this was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements).
  • Reviewing patient records to identify issues and clarify actions taken by the provider.
  • Requesting evidence from the provider.
  • A site visit.
  • Reviewing information received to CQC from patients regarding their experience of being a patient at the practice.
  • Sending an email to members of the practice patient participation group for feedback

Our findings

We based our judgement of the quality of care at this service on a combination of:

  • what we found when we inspected
  • information from our ongoing monitoring of data about services and
  • information from the provider, patients, the public and other organisations.

We found that:

  • The practice provided care in a way that kept patients safe and protected them from avoidable harm.
  • Patients received effective care and treatment that met their needs.
  • Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care.
  • We saw a large amount of work had been carried out by the new provider of services since they acquired the contract in September 2022. This included addressing access issues at the practice. However, although most patients reported they could access care and treatment in a timely way, we had concerns that some patients could not get through on the telephone or obtain appointments. We received several complaints and staff had concerns regarding this.
  • There was effective leadership at the practice. However, from our staff questionnaires we identified that some staff were unhappy, some reported being stressed and anxious working at the practice, and that communication was poor and staff morale low.

We saw one area of outstanding practice which was;

  • The practice sought to increase the number of identified carers at the practice. They carried out a clinical audit, carried out actions such as, education of staff and patients, developing and distributing educational materials, staff training, checking and analysing progress. The practice website contained information for carers. The practice for the last 9 months had worked with a local community centre which a focused-on health and wellbeing. The practice and charity worked together to set up a group providing social prescribing support for carers. All of the carers on the register received an invitation to the group. Attendees were offered refreshments, an opportunity to talk with link workers, the practice received positive feedback from patients saying it was good that someone else understood how it was to be a carer. This resulted in an increase from 5.9% to 7% of the practice population who were registered as carers.

Whilst we found no breaches of regulations, the provider should:

  • Continue to assess access to the practice for patients.
  • Continue to address staff concerns regarding culture at the practice.
  • Review the quality of medicines reviews.

Details of our findings and the evidence supporting our ratings are set out in the evidence tables.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Health Care