Archived: Safeer Pharmacy

Updated 31 May 2019

Safeer Pharmacy is situated at 194 Edgware Road, London, W2 2DS. It is a high street pharmacy with an on-call private doctor service. The on-call service is available throughout the pharmacies opening hours; Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday 10am -12pm and 10am to 1pm Wednesday and Saturday.

Most people who use the service are visitors from Middle Eastern countries. The doctors see adults, and children over 12 years of age for minor conditions. The doctors work on a locum basis. If a person walks in to the pharmacy requesting to see a doctor, pharmacy staff phone a locum doctor who attends the medical clinic and provides a private consultation. Services provided include care and treatment for minor ailments, phlebotomy and wound management.

The service is registered with the Care Quality Commission for the regulated activities of treatment of disease, disorder or injury and surgical procedures.

The inspection team was led by a CQC inspector and included a GP specialist advisor.

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 31 May 2019

This inspection was a focused inspection to follow up on concerns identified previously at inspections conducted on the 10 May 2018 and 11 October 2018.

At the inspection on 10 May 2018 we found the practice was not meeting the regulations for providing safe, effective and well-led care. There were breaches in relation to the following regulations of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 – Regulation 17 Good governance and Regulation 18 Staffing. Following the inspection, enforcement action was taken in respect of these regulations.

The inspection on 11 October 2018, was carried out to consider whether the provider had made sufficient improvements to meet the regulations in breach. At the inspection, we found insufficient evidence of improvement with continuing breaches of Regulation 17 Good governance and Regulation 18 Staffing. Following the inspection, we took further enforcement action and decided to begin the process of preventing the provider from operating the service. This inspection on 21 March 2019 was carried out to further assess whether any improvement had been made since the previous inspections. At the inspection, we found insufficient evidence of improvement with continuing breaches of Regulation 17 and 18.

Our key findings were:

• There were continuing shortfalls in safety systems and processes. Including those for safeguarding, recruitment, indemnity arrangements, medical emergencies, prescribing, identity checks and the safety netting of abnormal test results.
• We identified additional concerns in relation to assessing and triaging walk-in patients.
• There were continuing shortfalls in relation to effective needs assessment, staff training, the monitoring of clinical practice and parental consent to care and treatment.
• There had been no improvement in leadership or governance arrangements.
• Systems were in place to gather feedback from patients.
• The arrangements in respect of the duty of candour had improved.

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