- GP practice
Earls Barton Medical Centre
Report from 30 July 2025 assessment
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Date of Assessment: 3 September 2025 to 5 September 2025
Earls Barton Medical Centre is a GP practice providing services to 8,435 patients. The service is delivered at 8 Aggate Way, Earls Barton, NN6 0EU. Information published by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities shows that deprivation within the practice population group is in the 9th decile (9 out of 10). The lower the decile, the more deprived the practice population is relative to others. This service was under a caretaker after being rated Inadequate on 22 April 2021. At this assessment, the new providers have demonstrated that some improvements have been made.
We carried out an announced comprehensive assessment on 5 September 2025, during which we assessed all quality statements across the safe, effective, caring, responsive, and well-led key questions. This assessment considered the demographics of the people using the service, the context within which the service operates, and how this impacts service delivery.
During this assessment, we found that staff involved people in decisions about their care and treatment. We noted improvements had been made since the new providers took over from the caretaker provider, particularly in relation to environmental maintenance. However, our remote clinical searches identified gaps in the required monitoring of people prescribed high-risk medicines. This indicated that the provider did not have sufficiently effective governance systems or oversight arrangements to ensure all aspects of care and treatment were being appropriately monitored. This was a breach of Regulation 17 (Good governance). The practice addressed this and implemented additional systems and processes to reduce the risk of recurrence. Managers ensured that staff received appropriate training and regular appraisals to maintain high-quality care. However, we found that the practice was relying on a higher number of agency staff and had experienced a high turnover of staff in the past year. The practice acknowledged this issue and assured the CQC that plans were in place to address it, including new recruitment to the nursing team, which had been highlighted as an area of concern during this assessment.
People's experience of this service
Recent survey results, including those from the National GP Patient Survey and the NHS Friends and Family Test, were slightly below the national average. A minority of comments expressed concerns about accessing care, support, and treatment in ways that met people’s needs. People who used the service were also invited to provide feedback directly to CQC, which we reviewed. Overall, patients provided positive feedback regarding their satisfaction with the service. At the time of the assessment, the practice did not have an active Patient Participation Group (PPG), despite several attempts by the provider to encourage engagement. The provider was exploring alternative ways to gather and act on feedback to help inform service improvement.