The Care Quality Commission
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  • GP practice

Dearne Valley Group Practice

Overall: Requires improvement read more about inspection ratings

The Thurnscoe Centre, Holly Bush Drive, Thurnscoe, Rotherham, South Yorkshire, S63 0LT (01709) 886354

Provided and run by:
Dearne Valley Group Practice

Important: This service was previously registered at a different address - see old profile

All Inspections

During an assessment under our new approach

Date of Assessment: 26 February 2025 to 4 March 2025.

Dearne Valley Group Practice is a GP practice located in Thurnscoe, Rotherham. The practice has a Branch site at the Goldthorpe Centre in Goldthorpe, Rotherham. The practice delivers services to 11,500 patients under a contract held with NHS England. The provider is registered with CQC to deliver the Regulated Activities; diagnostic and screening procedures, maternity and midwifery services; treatment of disease, disorder or injury and surgical procedures. These are delivered from both sites. We inspected and rated this service under our previous methodology in March 2016. The practice was rated Good overall and in all key questions. At this assessment the practice has been rated Requires Improvement overall and for the key questions safe and effective. Caring, responsive and well-led have been rated as Good. The service was in breach of legal regulation 12, safe care and treatment. We have asked the provider for an action plan in response to these concerns.

Managers told us that at the direction of their local ICB they used a clinical search system called Eclipse. However, this did not always identify patients requiring regular monitoring or follow up, such as those with long term conditions or prescribed high risk medicines. We expect all GP Practices to have systems in place to review these patients in line with best practice guidance.

The National General Practice Profiles states that 97% of the practice population are white, with 0.8% Asian and 0.8% Black. Information published by Office for Health Improvement and Disparities shows that deprivation within the practice population group is in the 1st decile (1 of 10). The lower the decile, the more deprived the practice population is relative to others. This assessment considered the demographics of the people using the service, the context the service was working within and how this impacted service delivery. Where relevant, further commentary is provided in the quality statements section of this report.

14 March 2016

During a routine inspection

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Dearne Valley Group Practice on 14 March 2016. Overall the practice is rated as good.

Our key findings across all the areas we inspected were as follows:

  • There was an open and transparent approach to safety and an effective system in place for reporting and recording significant events.
  • Risks to patients were assessed and well managed.
  • Staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence based guidance. Staff had the skills, knowledge and experience to deliver effective care and treatment.
  • Patients told us they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.
  • Information about services and how to complain was available and easy to understand.

  • Patients said they found it difficult to speak to a receptionist by telephone. The practice manager told us this was a long standing problem and the practice had tried to resolve this in several different ways, such as introducing an automated appointment system. They were working with the owner of the building to improve telephone access and were looking into other ways of providing information to patients.

  • Patients were able to make appointments on line and through the automated appointment system which gave them a choice of GP. There was a sit and wait system with one of the GPs most afternoons.
  • Patients we spoke with told us there was access to urgent appointments available the same day and that there was continuity of care.
  • The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
  • There was a clear leadership structure and staff felt supported by management. The practice proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on.
  • The registered provider was aware of and complied with the requirements of the Duty of Candour.

The practice was caring and staff went the extra mile for their patients. We saw three areas of outstanding practice to evidence this:

The practice and branch site both had a palliative care co-ordinator. When patients with palliative care needs had been identified, they were allocated a palliative care co-ordinator depending on which of the sites they preferred. They were then given a letter with a photograph of their palliative care co-ordinator on it and a direct telephone number. This was to enable easy access to discuss any care needs, order prescriptions or for advice. This was set up following a complaint that palliative care information could not be found quickly.

The practice had organised community events, such as a coffee morning at a local community centre to raise awareness of health and wellbeing, long term conditions and benefits advice. This had a good response and one patient told us how the advice they received that morning helped them to claim attendance allowance for an older relative. They also organised a baby first aid event with St John’s Ambulance. Both of these events were open to the whole community. The staff held a baking sale to raise money for charity and there were further events being planned for the future.

One significant event discussed a situation where the district nurses could not gain access to a house where a patient was living. One of the GPs and another member of staff investigated and emergency services were called. The patient needed urgent social care, this was arranged whilethe GP bought essential groceries. The staff made the patient comfortable and visited the following day before an urgent package of care was put in place.

The areas where the provider should make improvement are:

To develop and implement an action plan to address the problems for patients with telephone access to the surgery so that they can be assured that patients are able to contact the surgery whenever necessary.

To review the complaints policy to include documentation of responses where complaints have been responded to verbally.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice