St Mary's Medical Centre - Care Quality Commission

Background to this inspection

Updated 29 June 2017

St Marys Medical Centre primary medical services to 13,490 patients.

The practice has a General Medical Services Contract (GMS). The GMS contract is the contract between general practices and NHS England for delivering primary care services to local communities.

St Marys Medical Centre is based on Wharf Road, close to the centre of the historic market town of Stamford, Lincolnshire. The Practice offers on-site parking with designated disabled parking. Additional parking is available further along Wharf Road.

The majority of consulting rooms are on the ground floor. Patients who would find it difficult to access the first floor will be seen on the ground floor. The Practice has dedicated GP and Nursing Team consulting rooms.

The Reception Desk is easily accessible on arrival and the Practice has a self-check-in system and offers online appointment booking.

St Mary’s Medical Centre is a Dispensing Practice. The Practice is open to all patients living within the PE9 postcode and the area immediately surrounding Stamford. Dispenses to approximately 4,000 patients.

At the time of our inspection the practice employed eight GP partners (five female and three male), two salaried GPs (two female) and two GP registrars. The surgery also employed a practice manager, assistant practice manager, dispensary manager, one nurse practitioner, six practice nurses, two health care assistants and 22 dispensary, reception and administration staff.

The practice is located within the area covered by South Lincolnshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). The CCG is responsible for commissioning services from the practice. A CCG is an organisation that brings together local GP’s and experienced health professionals to take on commissioning responsibilities for local health services.

We inspected the following location where regulated activities are provided:-

St Marys Medical Centre, Wharf Road, Stamford, Lincs. PE9 2DH

The practice was open between 8am and 6.30pm Monday to Friday. Dispensary was open 8.45 am to 6pm. Appointments were available from Monday to Friday 8am to 11am and 4pm to 6pm. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday 7am to 11am and 4pm to 6pm.

Extended hours surgeries were offered on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings from 7am and Saturday morning 8am to 10.30am.

Telephone triage takes place every day from 8.30am to 6.30pm and is run by a GP and a Nurse. Patients will receive a call back within one hour. Triage appointments are available Monday to Friday 8.30am to 12 noon and 2pm to 6.30pm.

Some GP telephone appointments are also available on a daily basis.

In addition to pre-bookable appointments that could be booked up to three weeks in advance, urgent appointments were also available for people that needed them.

The practice have an average of 855 GP appointments a week.

The practice had a website which we found had an easy layout for patients to use. It enabled patients to find out a wealth of information about the healthcare services provided by the practice.

St Marys Medical Centre had opted out of providing out-of-hours services (OOH) to their own patients. The OOH service is provided by Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust.

Overall inspection

Good

Updated 29 June 2017

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at St Mary’s Medical Centre on 12 April 2016 followed by a focussed follow-up inspection on 22 November 2016.

The overall ratings for the practice was requires improvement. The full comprehensive report from April 2016 and focussed follow-up inspection from November 2016 can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for St Marys Medical Centre on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

This inspection was an announced focused inspection on 15 June 2017 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 inspections of 12 April and 22 November 2016. 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 overall rating for all the population groups are rated as good.

Our key findings were as follows:

We found the practice now had an effective systems and processes in place for significant events, near misses and incidents.
Risks to patients were now assessed and well managed.
An effective system had been put in place for the monitoring of staff training.
The practice had an effective overarching governance framework in place which supported the delivery of their strategy and good quality care.

The provider should:

Ensure translation and interpreter services are reviewed and updated.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)

Chief Inspector of General Practice