Background to this inspection
Updated
6 May 2020
Waters Edge Medical Centre is located in Leadsmithy Street, Middewich, Cheshire. The provider is registered with CQC to deliver the Regulated Activities; diagnostic and screening procedures, family planning services, maternity and midwifery services, surgical procedures and treatment of disease, disorder or injury.
Since the last inspection there has been a change to the GP partnership. The GP partners are Dr Beswick and Dr Pitalia. Dr Pitalia is the director of SSP Health GPMS Ltd. SSP Health GPMS Ltd is a large service that has an organisational structure that comprises directors, a chief operating officer and a medical director. There is also a head of finance, human resources and of data quality and assurance who provides support and advice to all their services including Waters Edge Medical Centre. SSP Health GPMS Ltd also has the additional support of a pharmacy technician, executive lead nurse and area managers.
The service has two partner GPs. One partner GP works at the practice along with a salaried GP and a bank GP (employed by SSP Health GPMS Ltd). There is also an advanced nurse practitioner, an emergency care practitioner, two practice nurses, a health care assistant and a pharmacist. There is a practice manager, area manager and a team of reception and administration staff.
Waters Edge Medical Centre is situated within the South Cheshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and provides services to 4,641 patients under the terms of a personal medical services (PMS) contract. This is a contract between general practices and NHS England for delivering services to the local community.
The National General Practice Profile states that 98.5% of the practice population is from a white background. Information published by Public Health England, rates the level of deprivation within the practice population group as eight, on a scale of one to ten. Level one represents the highest levels of deprivation and level ten the lowest. The majority of patients are less than 70 years of age with a large number (551) over this age.
Updated
6 May 2020
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Waters Edge Medical Centre on 5 March 2020 as part of our inspection programme. At this inspection we followed up on breaches of regulations identified at a previous inspection on 4 October 2017.
This inspection looked at the following key questions:
Safe
Effective
Caring
Responsive
Well-led
At the last inspection in October 2017 we rated the practice as requires improvement for providing safe, effective and well-led services because: The recruitment procedures were not established and operated effectively to ensure only fit and proper persons were employed. Improvements were needed to systems and processes to ensure good governance in accordance with the fundamental standards of care. In particular, with regard to health and safety and systems and processes such as a periodic check of the electrical wiring system, long- term conditions recall system and safeguarding. The provider also needed to ensure persons employed in the provision of the regulated activity received the appropriate support, training, professional development, supervision and appraisal necessary to enable them to carry out the duties.
At this inspection we found that the provider had satisfactorily addressed the above areas. 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 have rated this practice as good overall and good for all population groups.
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.
- The practice organised and delivered services to meet patients’ needs. Patients could access care and treatment in a timely way.
- The way the practice was led and managed promoted the delivery of good quality, person-centre care.
We saw an area of outstanding practice:
- The practice had identified members of staff as champions for patients with cancer and for patients who had been bereaved or who acted as carers. The provider told us these patients were proactively contacted by the champions so they knew about the support available, were signposted to the most appropriate services, received timely intervention and the care they needed.
Whilst we found no breaches of regulation, the provider should:
-
Embed the updated child protection policy to code significant adults when concerns about a child have been identified.
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Continue to monitor the system to add the date to patients’ records of any tests completed for the monitoring of high-risk medication.
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Continue to monitor the updated system to make a daily record of the vaccine fridge temperature.
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Continue to monitor records of checks of the cold-water systems in accordance with the legionella risk assessment.
Details of our findings and the evidence supporting our ratings are set out in the evidence tables.
Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP
Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care