Background to this inspection
Updated
23 October 2020
The Grove Surgery is located at Farthing Grove, Netherfield, Milton Keynes, MK6 4NG. It is part of the NHS Milton Keynes Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). The practice holds a General Medical Services (GMS) contract for providing services, which is a nationally agreed contract between general practices and NHS England for delivering general medical services to local communities.
The practice serves a population of approximately 7,900 patients. The practice population is largely white British, with less than 30% of the practice population being from Black and Minority Ethnicity backgrounds. Only 6% of the practice population are aged over 65 years and 28% are aged under 18 years.
Information published by Public Health England, rates the level of deprivation within the practice population group as one on a scale of one to ten. Level one represents the highest levels of deprivation and level ten the lowest. 8% of the practice population are unemployed.
The clinical team consists of three GP partners, one lead nurse, an advanced nurse practitioner, two practice nurses and a practice pharmacist. The team is supported by a practice manager and a team of non-clinical, administrative staff. Members of the community midwifery and health visiting team operate regular clinics from the practice location.
The practice operates from a single-storey purpose-built property. There is a car park outside the surgery, with disabled parking available.
The Grove Surgery is open from 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday. Appointments are available daily between 8.30am and 11am and between 3.30pm and 5.30pm. Extended appointment times are available on Saturdays between 8.15am and 10.30am, for pre-booked appointments only. When the practice is closed out of hours services can be accessed via the NHS 111 service. Information about this is available in the practice and on the practice website and telephone line. Patients are also able to access appointments outside of normal surgery hours via the Milton Keynes extended access service organised by the local federation, enabling patients to be seen at a number of different practices across the locality for routine appointments.
The practice provides family planning, surgical procedures, maternity and midwifery services, treatment of disease, disorder or injury and diagnostic and screening procedures as their regulated activities.
Updated
23 October 2020
We carried out an announced inspection at The Grove Surgery on 1 October 2019. The overall rating for the practice was good with the practice rated as requires improvement for being safe.
From the inspection on 1 October 2019, the practice was told they must:
- Ensure care and treatment is provided in a safe way to patients.
In addition, the practice was told they should:
- Continue to monitor the practice’s performance, in particular the number of patients being excepted.
- Encourage improved uptake of national cancer screening initiatives and childhood immunisations amongst the practice population.
- Ensure all staff complete sepsis awareness training.
- Accurately record smoking status for patients.
The full comprehensive report on the inspection carried out in October 2019 can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for The Grove Surgery on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
This inspection was a desk top follow up focused inspection undertaken on 1 October 2020 as part of our inspection programme to follow up on concerns identified at our previous inspection.
We based our judgement of the quality of care at this service on a combination of:
- documentation and information submitted by the provider.
- 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.
We found that:
- The practice had made improvements to the treatment room as required to ensure compliance with Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) standards.
- Individual staff immunisation status had been checked and recorded in a central spreadsheet by the practice. This showed evidence of vaccination for all current staff.
- All staff had completed sepsis awareness training.
- Published data reviewed from the Quality and Outcomes framework (01/04/2018 to 31/03/2019) showed exception reporting was still high for the practice, comparative to local and national averages. The practice advised they had worked hard to improve patient uptake and expected the data to reflect positive improvements when next published.
- Similarly, the practice advised they had taken active steps to encourage patient uptake of national cancer screening initiatives and childhood immunisations amongst the practice population through targeted discussions and information displayed in the practice. Although the challenges of their patient population remained, they anticipated some improvement would be reflected in the data when next published.
The areas where the provider should make improvements are:
- Continue to monitor the practice’s performance, in particular the number of patients being excepted.
- Encourage improved uptake of national cancer screening initiatives and childhood immunisations amongst the practice population.
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