Sovereign Medical Centre

Updated 30 May 2018

Updated 30 May 2018

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Sovereign Medical Centre on 1 August 2017. The overall rating for the practice was good with the practice rated as requires improvement for being safe.

From the inspection on 1 August 2017, the practice were told they must:

• Ensure care and treatment was provided in a safe way to patients. In particular, newly developed systems for managing safety alerts must be implemented effectively and recruitment checks must be completed for all staff.

In addition the practice were told they should:

• Monitor newly developed systems to manage patients taking high risk medicines to ensure they were working effectively.
• Ensure that staff completed all mandatory training in a timely manner and have adequate protected time within which to do so.
• Develop systems to identify and support more carers in their patient population.

The full comprehensive report on the inspection carried out in August 2017 can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Sovereign Medical Centre on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

This inspection was an announced focused inspection carried out on 1 May 2018 to confirm that the practice had carried out their plan to meet the legal requirements in relation to the breach in regulations that we identified in our previous inspection on 1 August 2017. This report covers our findings in relation to those requirements and improvements made since our last inspection.

Overall the practice is now rated as good.

Our key findings were as follows:

• Systems had been improved to ensure that appropriate action was taken in response to safety alerts to reduce risks to patient safety. Records of alerts received and action taken were kept securely.
• The practice carried out appropriate staff checks at the time of recruitment and on an ongoing basis.

Additionally where we previously told the practice they should make improvements our key findings were as follows:

• The arrangements for managing high risk medicines in the practice minimised risks to patient safety. In particular, there were adequate processes in place to reduce risks to patients taking high risk medicines.
• The majority of staff had completed all mandatory training and this was coherently recorded by the practice manager. We saw evidence that protected time was available to staff to ensure training was undertaken. Where staff had missed training events timescales were established to ensure completion of all training. We were informed that the outstanding update training for one member of staff was scheduled for completion by the end of May 2018.
• The practice had made considerable efforts to identify and support more carers in its population. At the time of our inspection the practice had identified 97 patients as carers (less than 1%). This was a marked improvement on the 52 patients identified as carers in August 2017. We saw evidence that the practice had engaged with MK Carers (a local organisation providing support and advice to carers) to further develop the support they could offer to carers and to devise an action plan for the future.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are as follows:

• Continue with efforts to identify more carers in order to offer them support.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP

Chief Inspector of General Practice

Updated 30 May 2018

Updated 30 May 2018

Updated 30 May 2018

Updated 30 May 2018

Updated 30 May 2018

Updated 30 May 2018