Archived: The Medical Centre

Updated 18 February 2019

The Medical Centre is registered with CQC as an independent healthcare provider with independent consulting services. The registered provider is Manchester City Football Club Limited. The Medical Centre provides services for the football First Team players, the Under 21 team players and the Women’s team players. The Medical Centre provides services to children as students of the club’s football academy, which could include children from the age of four years. The services include the full primary healthcare for the first team and women’s teams. The children and their families are encouraged to register with an NHS GP. The cost of the service is covered by the football club as part of the benefits package for the players.

The Medical Centre is split into two areas, one for the First Team and Under 21s and one for the Academy. The centre has one full time doctor who is the medical officer for the First Team and the Under 21s. He travels with the First Team to provide care and treatment as needed during and following matches. The Medical Centre also employs four doctors on a consultancy basis and one consultant sports physician. All other staff are employed by the company. This includes physiotherapists, sports therapists and administration staff.

The Medical Centre has a senior management team with two CQC registered managers.  A registered manager is a person who is registered with the Care Quality Commission to be responsible for the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

The inspection was undertaken by a CQC lead inspector.

Updated 18 February 2019

We undertook a comprehensive inspection of The Medical Centre on the 20 December 2017 under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. We found that the service was providing effective, caring, responsive, care however, they were not providing safe care in accordance with the relevant regulations and well led required improvements.

The full comprehensive report following the inspection on 20 December 2017 can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for The Medical Centre on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

We undertook an announced focused inspection of The Medical Centre carried out on 10 January 2019 to confirm that the practice had carried out their plan to meet the legal requirements in relation to the breaches in regulations that we identified in our previous inspection on 20 December 2017. This report covers our findings in relation to those requirements and additional improvements made since our last inspection. At the inspection we found that:

Are services safe?

We found that this service was providing safe care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Are services well-led?

We found that this service was providing well-led care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Our key findings were as follows:

• Safeguarding policies and procedures were up to date to ensure patients were protected from abuse and improper treatment. All staff had received safeguarding training at an appropriate level to their role.

• The arrangements for enabling doctors to work at the centre on a consultancy basis had been reviewed. Each doctor had a comprehensive recruitment file with all the required information to demonstrate their on-going fitness to practice.

• New systems had been put into place to share information relevant to significant event reporting.

• The service was in the process of developing a programme of quality improvement activity. Regular sports injury audits and reviews took place to improve medical services.

• The patients’ views and concerns were encouraged, heard and acted on. A new patient complaint leaflet had been implemented and all complaints were investigated by the medical leadership team.

• Patients who used the medical team for advice, support and treatment were given a questionnaire to complete about their experiences. The results were shared with the medical team to improve services.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP

Chief Inspector of General Practice