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  • GP practice

Archived: Spring View Medical Centre

Overall: Requires improvement read more about inspection ratings

Mytham Road, Little Lever, Bolton, Lancashire, BL3 1HQ (01204) 578128

Provided and run by:
Spring View Medical Centre

Important: This service is now registered at a different address - see new profile

All Inspections

8 October 2019

During an inspection looking at part of the service

We inspected Spring View Medical Centre 4 December 2014 as part of our inspection programme. The practice was given an overall rating of Good with the following key question ratings:

Safe – Good

Effective – Good

Caring – Good

Responsive – Good

Well-led – Good

We undertook an annual regulatory review of the practice on 20 May 2019 and a focused inspection was agreed in line with the five-year time limit.

We undertook a focused inspection of Spring View Medical Centre on 8 October 2019 to review the key questions Effective and Well Led. During the inspection it was necessary to open the key question Safe because of concerns identified during discussions about incident reporting, medicine management and the documentation of clinical records.

At this inspection on 8 October 2019 we rated the practice as 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 requires improvement overall.

We rated the practice as requires improvement for providing Safe, Effective and Well Led services because:

  • Although the aim of the practice was to provide the best possible health care for their patients, we found that care was not consistently provided according to best practice, for example guidance was followed dependent on clinical awareness.
  • Although their aim was to include all members of the team in decision-making not all staff described an open culture where discussion and learning took place, and some staff described an “us and them” feeling.
  • The practice was not able to corroborate with evidence, the information they had provided at the annual regulatory review. For example, we did not see an improved safeguarding process, monthly searches to identify children at risk or monthly meetings where concerns were discussed.
  • The practice could not evidence an improved process for incident reporting and learning.
  • There was inconsistency in clinical documentation, specifically around the recording of medicine reviews.
  • We found that there was not always a whole team approach with regard to providing care and staff worked in isolation.

The concerns that we found relate to all population groups and we have therefore rated the population groups as requires improvement overall.

The practice must:

  • Ensure the care and treatment of patients is appropriate, meets their needs and reflects their preferences.
  • Establish effective systems and processes to ensure good governance in accordance with the fundamental standards of care

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

4 December 2014

During a routine inspection

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We inspected Spring View Medical Centre on 4 December 2014. This was a comprehensive inspection. This means we reviewed the provider in relation to the five key questions leading to a rating on each on a four point rating scale. We assessed all six of the population groups and the inspection took place at the same time as we inspected a number of practices in the area overseen by Bolton Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).

The overall rating for Spring View Medical Centre was good.

Our key findings were as follows:

           Systems were in place for ensuring the practice was regularly cleaned. We found the practice to be clean at the time of our visit. A system was in place for managing Infection prevention and control.

           The practice had systems in place to ensure best practice was followed. This is to ensure that people’s care, treatment and support achieves good outcomes and is based on the best available evidence.

           Information we received from patients reflected that practice staff interacted with them in a positive and empathetic way. They told us that they were treated with respect, always in a polite manner and as an individual.

           Patients spoke positively in respect of accessing services at the practice. A system was in place for patients who required urgent appointments to be seen the same day, and extended hours appointments were available daily. 

We found an area of outstanding practice. Extended hours appointments were available until 10pm on weekdays and 1pm during weekends and on bank holidays. Patients attended a nearby practice for these appointments, and the GP they saw had access to all their electronic medical records which were updated at the time of the appointment.

There were however also areas of practice where the provider needs to make improvements.  

The provider should:

  • Ensure staff knew the procedure to follow when carrying out chaperone duties.
  • Ensure Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks were carried out for all appropriate staff, including those carrying out chaperone duties.
  • Ensure staff training, including on-line training was effective.
  • Consider having oxygen or a defibrillator available for use in an emergency and have a risk assessment in place if it was decided not to have these items.     

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice