Background to this inspection
Updated
16 March 2020
Firdale Medical Centre is situated in Northwich Cheshire. The practice has a car park and can be accessed by a local bus service. A pharmacy is located nearby.
The provider is registered with CQC to deliver the Regulated Activities; diagnostic and screening procedures, family planning services, maternity and midwifery services, surgical procedures and treatment of disease, disorder or injury.
Firdale Medical Centre is part of the Vale Royal Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and provides services to 9,291 patients under the terms of a Personal Medical Services (PMS) contract. This is a contract between general practices and NHS England for delivering services to the local community.
At this practice there are four GP partners and one salaried GP. There is a lead practice nurse and two additional practice nurses. Clinicians are supported by a practice manager and reception and administration staff. The practice also has a contract with two self-employed counsellors to provide a counselling service to its patients. The practice is a training practice for GP registrars (a registrar is a qualified doctor who is training to become a GP through a period of working and training in a practice), medical students and nurses.
The National General Practice Profile states that 98% of the practice population is from a white background. The majority of patients who use the service fall within the 30 – 60 age group. Information published by Public Health England, rates the level of deprivation within the practice population group as seven, on a scale of one to ten. Level one represents the highest levels of deprivation and level ten the lowest. Male life expectancy is 80 years compared to the national average of 79 years. Female life expectancy is 84 years compared to the national average of 83 years.
Updated
16 March 2020
We carried out a comprehensive inspection of Firdale Medical Centre on 12 March 2019. We rated the practice Good overall but Requires Improvement for providing responsive services because although there were no breaches of regulations, the practice had not adequately formally monitored patient experiences of accessing the practice to make sure improvements were made.
We also recommended that the practice should:
- Continue to ensure staff have the information they need about safeguarding concerns when booking appointments for patients.
- Monitor the revised procedures for the management of uncollected prescriptions and the security of prescriptions.
- Record all significant events on one record to enable patterns and trends and progress to be more easily identified.
- Put in place a spreadsheet to monitor safety alerts.
- Make information about support groups available on the practice website.
- Document the remit for referrals to the self-employed counsellors.
- Ensure a written agreement between the counsellor, practice and patient to clearly identify what information is to be recorded, where it is to be stored and who has access to this information.
- Ensure there is an effective system for managing verbal complaints.
At this desk based follow up inspection carried out 28 February 2020, we only focused on the areas requiring improvement and found that the provider had satisfactorily addressed these areas and therefore the practice is now rated as Good for providing responsive services.
As the issues from the previous inspection also affected all the population groups, all population groups were originally rated as requires improvement. We have now rated the practice as good for responsive care for all population groups as the issues have been addressed.
We based our judgement of the quality of care at this service on a combination of:
• information from our ongoing monitoring of data about services and
• information from the provider, patients, the public and other organisations.
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
Working age people (including those recently retired and students)
Updated
16 March 2020
People experiencing poor mental health (including people with dementia)
Updated
16 March 2020