Archived: Your Health Partnership - Whiteheath Medical Centre

Updated 19 June 2018

Your Health Partnership – Whiteheath Medical Centre is a partnership of four practice and two branch sites. Whiteheath Medical centre provides NHS services to the local community in Oldbury, West Midlands. The practice has an approximate patient population of 8000 and is part of the NHS Sandwell and West Birmingham Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). CCGs are groups of general practices that work together to plan and design local health services in England. They do this by 'commissioning' or buying health and care services.

The practice has recently merged its patient list size with a combined total of 46,000 patients. where patients were able to visit any of the practices for care and treatment. The provider has not amended its registration as a result of the merging of the practice list; therefore we inspected Whiteheath Medical Centre, Badsey Rd, Oldbury as part of our inspection programme and this report reflect findings for this site only.

The service is registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide primary medical services. Services to patients are provided under a General Medical Services (GMS) contract used when services are agreed locally with a practice which may include additional services beyond the standard contract. The practice has expanded its contracted obligations to provide enhanced services to patients. An enhanced service is above the contractual requirement of the practice and is commissioned to improve the range of services available to patients.

The clinical team includes four GPs (one female and three male). The nursing team worked centrally and included advanced nurse practitioners. Many other functions were also centralised. For example, there was a centralised governance team which was based at the surgery.

Practice level data available to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) shows the service serves a higher than average number of patients who are aged between 14 and 18 years when compared to the national average. The number of patients aged 65 and over is slightly lower than average. Based on data available from Public Health England, the levels of deprivation in the area served by the surgery shows the practice is located in a more deprived area than national averages, ranked at two out of 10, with 10 being the least deprived. (Deprivation covers a broad range of issues and refers to unmet needs caused by a lack of resources of all kinds, not just financial).

The practice is open Monday to Friday between 8am and 6.30pm. Extended hours appointments are offered every Saturday morning from 8.30am to 11am and appointments can be booked over the telephone, online or in person at the surgery. Sunday telephone consultations are available from 9am to 10am. Patients are provided information on how to access an out of hours service by calling the surgery or viewing the practice website (https://yhp.org.uk/whiteheath).

The practice runs a number of services for its patients including; chronic disease management, new patient checks, smoking cessation, phlebotomy, travel vaccines and advice. The practice offered a number of practice-based, consultant-led outpatient clinics to patients requiring specialist advice such as Cardiology, Dermatology, Ear Nose and Throat (ENT), Gynaecology, Ophthalmology and Rheumatology.

Updated 19 June 2018

This practice is rated as requires improvement overall. (At our previous inspection in January 2016 the practice was rated as Good overall)

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Requires Improvement

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Requires Improvement

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? - Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Your Health Partnership - Whiteheath Medical Centre on 11 April 2018 as part of our inspection programme.

At this inspection we found:

• There was an open and transparent approach to safety and a system in place for reporting and recording significant events. However, some staff told us that learning was not always shared with them.
• There were systems to minimise risks to patient safety. However, the landlord who carried out some health and safety risk assessments had not shared these with the service.
• The practice had upskilled administration staff to process hospital communications and to ensure appropriate coding. However, there was no clinical oversight of the process. .
• The practice routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. This was reviewed in the centralised clinical quality and operations group (CQOG) meetings.
• The practice ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence- based guidelines. Audits we looked at demonstrated this.
• Feedback received from patients on the day and from comment cards showed that patients were treated with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect. However, patient feedback through the national patient survey feedback was that they were not always involved in decisions about their care during consultations.
• Some patients told us that they found it difficult to get through on the telephone and the practice was working with the CCG to implement a new telephone system.
• The practice was a partnership of six locations and the management and leadership structure was clear and available to staff. Staff felt supported by management.
• We saw evidence that the practice proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on. For example, patients with multiple long term conditions were managed in a single appointment and this was developed through feedback from nursing staff.
• There was a strong focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation.

The areas where the provider must make improvements are:

• Ensure care and treatment is provided in a safe way to patients.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Review process for making appointments to provide easy access for patients.
• Effective communication should be established to ensure all learning such as those related to incidents are shared with all staff.
• Consider how patient feedback from the national survey could be improved particularly in relation to the experience of their consultations with specific clinicians.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP
Chief Inspector of General Practice

Updated 19 June 2018

Updated 19 June 2018

Updated 19 June 2018

Updated 19 June 2018

Updated 19 June 2018

Updated 19 June 2018