We carried out an announced focused inspection at Dr B Bekas on 14 January 2020. At this inspection we looked at the key questions, Effective and Well-led. Overall, the practice was rated as Requires Improvement. We carried out this inspection following our annual review of the information available to us including information provided by the practice. Our review indicated that there may have been a significant change to the quality of care provided since the last inspection.
As a result of findings at the January 2020 inspection, we issued the practice with a requirement notice due to a breach of Regulation 17 Health and Social Care Act (HSCA) Regulations 2014, Good Governance, in March 2020. There were no systems or processes that enabled the registered person to assess, monitor and improve the quality and safety of the services being provided.
In particular:
- There was no programme of quality improvement and no clinical audits had been carried out.
- Staff, including clinicians and administrative staff had not attended any SEPSIS training and therefore we could not be assured that patients attending the practice with symptoms would be followed-up appropriately.
- There was no procedure in place for following-up two-week wait referrals.
- The practice was not aware of their low cancer-screening data and so there was no plan or interventions in place for improving uptake.
- Leaders could not evidence that there were systems and processes in place to ensure they were practicing in line with evidence-based best practice
We carried out an announced focused inspection at Dr B Bekas on 28 and 29 April 2021. At this inspection we followed up on the breach identified at our previous inspection. We inspected the key questions: Safe, Effective and Well-led.
The full reports for previous inspections can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Dr B Bekas on our website at www.cqc.org.uk
Why we carried out this inspection
This inspection was a focused follow-up inspection, following the requirement notice issued in March 2020. We required the provider to establish systems or processes to ensure good governance in accordance with the fundamental standards of care. We found that the practice had complied with the requirement notice.
How we carried out the inspection
Throughout the pandemic Care Quality Commission has continued to regulate and respond to risk. However, taking into account the circumstances arising as a result of the pandemic, and in order to reduce risk, we have conducted our inspections differently.
This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site. This was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements.
This included
- Conducting staff interviews via video conferencing
- Completing clinical searches on the practice’s patient records system and discussing findings with the provider
- Reviewing patient records to identify issues and clarify actions taken by the provider
- Requesting evidence from the provider
- A short site visit
Our findings
We based our judgement of the quality of care at this service on a combination of:
- what we found when we inspected
- information from our ongoing monitoring of data about services and
- information from the provider, patients, the public and other organisations.
We have rated this practice as Good overall and Requires Improvement for providing effective care. We rated the population groups Families, Children and Young People, Working age people (including those recently retired and students) and People experiencing poor mental health (including people with dementia) as Requires Improvement because:
- Patients did not always receive effective care and treatment that met their needs. The practice had not met the minimum 90% uptake target for four out of the five childhood immunisation indicators, cancer screening data remained lower than the CCG average uptake and below the England average uptake of 80% and the number of agreed care plans for people experiencing poor mental health were below the local and national average. These indicators affected the population groups, families, children, and young people, working age people (including those recently retired and students), and people experiencing poor mental health. As a result, we rated these population groups as requires improvement.
As three population groups were rated as requires improvement, this meant that the effective key question was also rated as requires improvement overall.
Whilst we found no breaches of regulations, the provider should:
- Increase the uptake of childhood immunisations, patients attending for cancer screening and improve the completion of care plans for people experiencing poor mental health.
Details of our findings and the evidence supporting our ratings are set out in the evidence tables.
Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP
Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care