Greens Norton Medical Centre Also known as Greens Norton and Weedon Medical Practice

Updated 12 May 2022

Greens Norton and Weedon Medical Practice is located in Northamptonshire and has a branch practice called Weedon Medical Practice. Both sites have a dispensary within them and serve the residents of Greens Norton and the surrounding villages.

The practice is registered with the CQC to carry out the following regulated activities - diagnostic and screening procedures, surgical procedures, family planning, maternity and midwifery services and treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

The practice offers Primary Medical Services under contract with Northamptonshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). The practice and branch has eight GP partners, two salaried GPs, one advanced nurse practitioner, one prescribing nurse, four practice nurses, four healthcare assistances and a team of administrators and dispensers. In addition, patients have access to a podiatrist, two social prescribers and two pharmacists who are employed through the additional roles reimbursment scheme. (The ARRs scheme provides funding for additional roles within GP practice to support multi-disciplinary teams).

Greens Norton is a registered training and teaching practice and provides training to GP registrars. GP registrars are qualified doctors who are training to become a GP through a period of working and training in a practice. The practice also trains newly qualified doctors as part of the general postgraduate medical training programme which forms the bridge between medical school and specialist/general practice training.

The practice population is pre-dominantly white British with 25% of patients over the age of 65 years. National data indicates the area is one of low deprivation. The practice has approximately 13,665 patients.

When the practice is closed out-of-hours services are provided by the Northamptonshire GP Out of Hours service which is run by Integrated Care 24 and can be accessed via the NHS 111 service.

Updated 12 May 2022

We carried out an announced inspection at Greens Norton and Weedon Medical Practice on 25 April 2022. Overall, the practice is rated as Good.

The key questions are rated as:

Safe - Good

Effective - Good

Caring - Good

Responsive - Good

Well-led - Good

Following our previous inspection on 22 January 2020, the practice was rated Good overall and Good for providing Effective, Caring, Responsive and Well-led services. The practice was rated as Requires Improvement for providing Safe services.

From the inspection on 22 January 2020, the practice was told they must:

• Ensure care and treatment is provided in a safe way to patients.

The full reports for previous inspections can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Greens Norton and Weedon Medical Practice on our website at www.cqc.org.uk

Why we carried out this inspection

This inspection was a focused follow-up inspection to follow up on the Requires Improvement rating for safe at the last inspection in January 2020. The practice was found to be in breach of Regulation 12 of the Health & Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. A requirement notice was issued to the provider under Regulation 12: Safe Care and Treatment due to the area of non-compliance we found.

In January 2020, we rated the practice as Requires Improvement for providing safe services because:

• The provider could not demonstrate that all required recruitment checks had been completed prior to staff commencing their roles.
• Staff immunisations were not being recorded by the practice.
• There was no evidence of clinical supervision and oversight of the prescribing practice of non-medical prescribers.
• Medicines were not being safely stored due to ineffective oversight of the cold chain.
• Significant events were not being reviewed to look for themes and trends.

How we carried out the inspection:

Throughout the pandemic CQC has continued to regulate and respond to risk. However, taking into account the circumstances arising as a result of the pandemic, and in order to reduce risk, we have conducted our inspections differently.

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to avoid an on-site visit. This was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements.

This included:

• Undertaking a short site visit to undertake checks and review evidence.
• Reviewing evidence sent in advance of the inspection to demonstrate action taken and improvements made.
• Speaking with staff.

Our findings

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 Good overall.

We found that:

• Improvements had been made to the management of staff recruitment files.
• Records of staff immunity status and vaccination history had been compiled. Although some gaps remained, the practice had taken steps to reduce risk and had a schedule for completion.
• Evidence reviewed demonstrated there was a system for ensuring clinical oversight of prescribing for non-medical prescribers, this included audits of treatments.
• Systems for ensuring the effective supervision of the cold chain had been implemented to support safe management and storage of medicines.
• Standard Operating Procedures relating to the destruction of controlled drugs were being implemented effectively.
• Significant events were reviewed as standing agenda items at regular meetings with evidence of learning and dissemination where needed.

The provider should:

• Continue to complete staff records relating to immunity status and vaccination history.

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