Background to this inspection
Updated
7 February 2020
The surgery is located in the London Borough of Southwark and provides a general practice service to around 2,300 patients. The ethnicity of patients is mainly those of Asian and Black Caribbean with a number of white British patients. The practice has a high number of young students as it is located in the Southbank university area with a small number of patients aged 65 and over. The practice is located in a purpose built building and shares facilities with another GP practice and primary care services. The practice is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to provide the regulated activities of: treatment of disease, disorder or injury; family planning; and maternity and midwifery services at one location. The practice has a General Medical Services (GMS) contract and provides a full range of essential, additional and enhanced services including maternity services, child and adult immunisations, family planning clinic, contraception services and minor surgery.
The General Medical Services (GMS) contract is the contract between general practices and NHS England for delivering primary care services to local communities. The practice is currently open five days a week from 8:00am - 18:30pm. In addition, the practice offers extended opening hours from 6:30 pm to 7:15pm on Mondays and Thursdays. Consultation times are 08:00am until 13:00pm and 16:00am until 18:30pm. The practice had opted out of providing out of hours (OOH) services to their own patients and directs patients to the out-of-hours provider NHS 111. The practice was also taking part in a local initiative for the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) where extended hours were being offered daily at one practice in the locality and all patient records registered in the CCG were available through the electronic system. The practice has a single handed male GP, a female practice nurse working four hours per week and two administrative staff. The practice manager was based at the practice three days a week.
Updated
7 February 2020
We carried out an inspection of this service on 11 December 2019 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. We previously inspected the practice on 22 April and 15 October 2015 and rated it Good overall. At this inspection we found the service to be Good in all the key questions and all population groups except People of Working Age which was rated Requires Improvement.
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 Good for all population groups except People of Working Age which was rated Requires Improvement.
We rated the practice as Good for providing safe services because:
• There was a formal process for reviewing patients prescribed high risk medicines to monitor their health.
• The practice was correctly monitoring indemnity arrangements and professional registrations of clinical staff.
• Staff demonstrated competent knowledge of safeguarding, fire and infection control training.
• Safeguarding arrangements and the mechanisms for reporting significant events were clear.
We rated the practice as Good for providing Effective services because:
• There was clear care planning for patients.
• The practice had systems to review and monitor the quality of care provided by locum staff and all staff had been appraised.
• The practice undertook effective joint working with other organisations.
• Performance indicators for patients with childhood immunisation rates and cervical screening were below targets. The practice was working to address these areas and this was evidenced by the improvements demonstrated by unvalidated data following various approaches towards communication and information for parents.
We rated the practice as Good for providing Caring services because:
• Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care.
• The practice had identified the carers within their practice list and had implemented support for them.
We rated the practice as Good for providing Responsive services because:
• The complaints policy was accessible and had been updated. Complaints had been responded to and recorded.
• The appointment systems were easy to use and patients were supported to access appointments.
We rated the practice as Good for providing well-led services because:
• The leadership governance and culture supported the delivery of high-quality person-centred care.
• The arrangement for governance and performance management were clear and operated effectively.
• There was action taken in response to feedback from staff and patients.
Whilst we found no breaches of regulations, the provider should:
• Put in place a safety net to chase any patients who fail to attend follow up appointments;
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