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  • GP practice

Sutton Valence Group Practice

Overall: Outstanding read more about inspection ratings

South Lane, Sutton Valence, Maidstone, Kent, ME17 3BD (01634) 240296

Provided and run by:
Sutton Valence Group Practice

Important: The provider of this service changed - see old profile

Latest inspection summary

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Background to this inspection

Updated 1 October 2020

Sutton Valence Group Practice is located at South Lane, Sutton Valence, Maidstone, Kent, ME17 3BD and has a branch practice at Branch Surgery, Southways, North Street, Sutton Valence, Kent, ME17 3HT (formerly known as Cobtree Medical Centre).

The practice offered dispensing services to those patients on the practice list who live more than one mile (1.6km) from their nearest pharmacy. The provider is registered with CQC to deliver the Regulated Activities; diagnostic and screening procedures, maternity and midwifery services, surgical procedures, family planning and treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

Sutton Valence Group Practice is situated in a rural area of the Kent and Medway Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and provides services to 6,568 patients under the terms of a general medical services (GMS) contract. This is a contract between general practices and NHS England for delivering services to the local community.

The provider is a partnership of two GPs (male) who registered with the CQC in October 2018. The practice employs four salaried GPs (two male and two female), an advanced nurse practitioner (female), two practice nurses (female), a health care assistant (female), a practice manager, two deputy practice managers, a dispensary manager, a phlebotomist, seven dispensers and several administration staff. The practice is a training practice and has one GP in specialist training. The practice is part of a wider network of GP practices (a federation) West Kent Health.

The number of patients over the age of 65 years is above the national average (practice 31%, national 26%). The National General Practice Profile states that 96% of the practice population is from a white background with a further 4% of the population originating from black, Asian, mixed or other non-white ethnic groups. Information published by Public Health England, rates the level of deprivation within the practice population group as eight, 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 83 years compared to the national average of 83 years.

Overall inspection

Outstanding

Updated 1 October 2020

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Sutton Valence Group Practice on 13 August 2019. We found the practice to be outstanding in providing a caring and responsive service. The practice achieved a good rating in effective and well led domains and requires improvement in safe.

We rated the practice as requires improvement for providing safe services because: There were identified issues with; fixed wiring certification and legionella checks, monitoring gaps in training and competency checks, vaccination screening of staff and staff recruitment checks. The practice was responsive to addressing these and implemented changes on the day of the inspection, therefore no breaches of regulation were identified. However, the new systems and processes required time to become fully embedded.

We undertook this desk based follow-up review on 18 August 2020, to check that the practice had followed their own action plan and to confirm that the previously implemented new systems and processes had been fully embedded. Based on the documentary evidence provided, we have rated the practice as Good for providing safe services. The Provider is now rated as Outstanding overall.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Sutton Valence Group Practice on our website at .

Details of our findings and the evidence supporting our ratings are set out in the evidence tables.

Dr Rosie Bennyworth BS BMedSci MRCGP
Chief Inspector of General Practice