• Doctor
  • GP practice

Archived: Crocus Medical Practice

Overall: Good read more about inspection ratings

The Old Rectory, 18 Castle Street, Saffron Walden, Essex, CB10 1BP (01799) 522327

Provided and run by:
Crocus Medical Practice

Important: This service is now registered at a different address - see new profile

Latest inspection summary

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Background to this inspection

Updated 10 April 2018

Crocus Medical Practice is located in Saffron Walden, Essex. This comprises of two practices, the main practice at Castle Street in Saffron Walden and the branch practice on High Street, Great Chesterford. These two practices were previously known as The Rectory Practice and Borough Lane Surgery, which merged in 2015. Patients can choose to attend either practice.

Crocus Medical Practice provides GP services to approximately 12,500 patients. New patients are registered from an eight mile radius of Saffron Walden.

The practice has more patients aged over 65 years than the CCG and national average and fewer patients aged under four years old. There are fewer patients that are unemployed than average, and a comparable amount of patients with a long-term health condition. The life expectancy of male patients is higher than the national average by three years, and the life expectancy of female patients is higher than the national average by one year.

Crocus Medical Practice is governed by a partnership of three female GPs and the practice is in the process of updating their registration with CQC. The partnership is supported by one male and three female salaried GPs, a nurse practitioner, four practice nurses and three healthcare assistants. A number of full and part time administrative and secretarial staff support the practice manager, who works full time across both locations.

The practice is able to offer dispensing services to those patients on the practice list who live more than one mile (1.6km) from a pharmacy. There is a dispensary located at both the main surgery at Saffron Walden and also the branch surgery at Great Chesterford. These are open every weekday from 8.30am until 6.30pm.

The main practice at Saffron Walden is open every weekday. It opens at 8am until 6.30pm on a Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Extended opening hours are on a Tuesday and Friday. On a Tuesday, the practice opens at 8am until 8pm and on a Friday, it opens at 7am until 6.30pm. The branch surgery at Great Chesterford is open every weekday from 8am until 6.30pm. Outside of the hours, patients can book appointments with a GP or nurse through reception at the local hub at Saffron Walden Community Hospital. The hub is open on a Wednesday and Thursday evening and all day on Saturday.

This inspection was an announced comprehensive inspection carried out on 6 March 2018 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 18 July 2017. In our inspection of July 2017, we found that the practice were overall requires improvement, with safe being inadequate, effective, caring and responsive good and well-led requires improvement. The full comprehensive report on the July 2018 inspection can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Crocus Medical Practice on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

During this inspection, we visited the main practice in Saffron Walden and the dispensaries in Saffron Walden and Great Chesterford.

Overall inspection

Good

Updated 10 April 2018

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Crocus Medical Practice on 18 July 2017. The overall rating for the practice was requires improvement. The full comprehensive report on the July 2018 inspection can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Crocus Medical Practice on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

This inspection was an announced comprehensive inspection carried out on 6 March 2018 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 18 July 2017. This report covers our findings in relation to those requirements and also additional improvements made since our last inspection.

Overall the practice is now rated as good.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? - Good

As part of our inspection process, we also look at the quality of care for specific population groups. The population groups are rated as:

Older People – Good

People with long-term conditions – Good

Families, children and young people – Good

Working age people (including those recently retired and students – Good

People whose circumstances may make them vulnerable – Good

People experiencing poor mental health (including people with dementia) - Good

Our key findings were as follows:

  • Significant improvements had been made since our previous inspection.
  • There was now a system to respond, action and review Medicine and Health products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) alerts.
  • Medicines were kept safely, including those that required cold storage.
  • Patients who were prescribed high risk medicines were receiving appropriate monitoring and review.
  • The practice had not carried out an appropriate risk assessment to identify all emergency medicines that it should stock at both locations, although relevant medicines were acquired immediately after our inspection.
  • Recruitment checks were effective and sought to ensure that staff were appropriately appointed. This was the case for permanent staff and locum GPs.
  • The practice maintained a register of patients with learning disabilities. There were 42 patients on the register. There had been 25 health checks of patients with learning disabilities carried out in the last year. We saw that the remainder of patients were being actively recalled.
  • Governance procedures had improved and were effective at identifying and mitigating risks to patients.
  • The practice had clear systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When incidents did happen, the practice learned from them and improved their processes.
  • The practice routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. It ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence- based guidelines.
  • Staff involved and treated patients with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
  • Patients found the appointment system easy to use and reported that they were able to access care when they needed it.
  • There was a strong focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice