Background to this inspection
Updated
23 March 2018
Clifton House and Nook Group Practice, Clifton House, 1 Church Street, Golcar Huddersfield HD7 4AQ and the branch site located at Nook Surgery, Salendine Shopping Centre, 144 Moor Hill Road, Huddersfield, HD3 3XA, provides services for 4,131 patients. The practice is situated within the Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Group and provides primary medical services under the terms of a personal medical services (PMS) contract.
Services are provided from a purpose built and accessible building which is owned by the provider. The population is mainly White British with some South Asian patients registered.
Information published by Public Health England rates the level of deprivation within the practice population group as two, on a scale of one to ten. Level one represents the highest levels of deprivation and level ten the lowest. Male life expectancy is 76 years compared to the national average of 79 years. Female life expectancy is 81 years compared to the national average of 83 years.
Dr Ilyas Ahmad is registered as a sole provider. Dr Ilyas Ahmad attends the practice four days a week and undertakes the equivalent of six clinical sessions. Locum GP cover is provided for the remainder of the week with two long-term (male and female) locum GPs offering a total of five sessions a week between them. The practice confirmed that the number of sessions were adequate for the number of appointments offered.
The practice has a nurse, a health care assistant and a practice manager. The provider also employs a team of part-time reception staff and a cleaner.
The main site at Clifton House is open Monday to Friday from 8.30am to 6pm. The branch surgery at Nook (which was also visited as part of the inspection) opens at 9am to 6pm from Monday to Friday, except Wednesday when the branch closes at 1pm. The provider does not offer any late clinics and surgeries. Surgeries typically run in morning and afternoon sessions.
Out of hours treatment is provided by Local Care Direct, which can be accessed by calling the surgery telephone number or contacting the NHS111 service.
When we returned for this inspection, we checked and saw that the previously awarded ratings were displayed as required in the premises and on the practice’s website.
Updated
23 March 2018
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Clifton House and Nook Group Practice on 6 June 2017. The overall rating for the practice was Inadequate and it was placed into Special Measures. The full comprehensive report on the June 2017 inspection can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Clifton House and Nook Group Practice on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
This inspection was an announced comprehensive inspection carried out on 22 February 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 6 June 2017. This report covers our findings in relation to those requirements and also additional improvements made since our last inspection.
The practice is now rated as Good overall, with the key question of are services effective rated as Requires Improvement.
The key questions are rated as:
Are services safe? – Good
Are services effective? – Requires Improvement
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 at this inspection were:
- The practice had taken action to remedy the breaches in regulation identified at the previous inspection.
- The practice now 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. When things went wrong, reviews and investigations were thorough and lessons learned were communicated throughout the practice to support improvement.
- The practice reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. It ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence based guidelines. We saw that the system for sharing drug safety alerts across the practice was sufficiently monitored.
- We saw that staff treated patients with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
- Patients found the appointment system easy to use and told us that they were able to access care when they needed it.
- There was now a focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation.
- The patients and staff benefitted from access to the protocol, ‘death of patient’. This ensured that all aspects of death and bereavement were dealt with appropriately, in a timely and sensitive manner. This also helped the GPs to facilitate early burial for religious reasons.
The areas where the provider should make improvements are:
- Continue to improve performance as measured by the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) in order to improve the care and treatment received by their patient population.
I am taking this service out of special measures. This recognises the significant improvements made to the quality of care provided by this service. These improvements now need to be sustained, moving forwards.
Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)
Chief Inspector of General Practice