Archived: Osprey House

Updated 25 March 2019

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the service was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

Osprey House is part of Vocare Limited. This service provides a NHS 111 service for a population of approximately 786,000 patients in Devon. Since October 2016, the provider, Vocare, is sub-contracted to deliver the service as part of an Integrated Urgent Care service. They are accountable to the main contract holder Devon Doctors. Vocare deliver GP Out of Hours and urgent care services to more than 9.2 million patients nationally. (NHS 111 is a telephone based service where people are assessed, given advice and directed to a local service that most appropriately meets their needs).

We visited Osprey House as part of our inspection. It operates between 7am and 11pm 365 days a year (with access to NHS 111 outside of these hours provided by another Vocare location). Osprey House operates from:

Osprey Road, Sowton Industrial Estate, Exeter EX2 7WN. The location is registered with the Care Quality Commission under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 to provide the following regulated activity: Transport services, triage and medical advice provided remotely.

Approximately 70% of public contact to this service is handled by Vocare House, Balliol Business Park, Newcastle Upon Tyne NE12 8EW. This location is registered separately with the Care Quality Commission. We did not visit this as part of this inspection.

Updated 25 March 2019

This service is rated as Good overall.

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

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Osprey House on 4 February 2019 as part of our inspection programme.

At this inspection we found:

• The service had systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When they did happen, the service learned from them and improved their processes.
• The service 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 people with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• Patients were mostly able to access advice care and treatment from the service within an appropriate timescale for their needs. At times when service demand was high regional escalation plans were implemented and external organisations keep abreast of performance and risk.
• There was a focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation.

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