Archived: Westcotes Health Centre

Updated 23 April 2020

DHU Health Care C.I.C. is a community interest company. The company has a strong presence in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland which includes the provision of urgent care and walk in centres, GP practices, GP out-of-hours services, a 24 hours a day, seven days a week home visiting service, community nursing, GP extended access hubs, hospital front door streaming services, a 24 hours a day, seven days a week clinical navigation hub and NHS111.

DHU provide all five tiers of urgent care in Leicester City, Leicestershire and Rutland, from Tier 0 general practice through to Tier 4 streaming at Leicester Royal Infirmary where clinicians working within the Emergency Department Streaming Service provide initial rapid assessment of patients. They determine the severity and the patient’s presenting complaint and then transfer the patient to the most appropriate department, service or specialism within United Hospitals Leicester or to Primary Care services.

DHU has a total of 564,000 patient contacts annually across the county, excluding NHS111 contacts.

DHU Health Care C.I.C. is commissioned by the three clinical commissioning groups in Leicestershire, Rutland and Leicester City to provide integrated urgent care services from four hubs at;

• Westcotes Health Centre, Fosse Road South, Leicester, LE3 0LP. There ae three satellite care centres at;

• Belgrave Healthcare Hub, Belgrave Health Centre, 52 Brandon Street, Leicester, LE4 6AW

• Saffron Health Centre, 509 Saffron Lane, Leicester, LE2 6UL

• The Merlyn Vaz Health and Social Care Centre, 1 Spinney Hill Road, Leicester, LE5 3GH

All four hubs offered urgent on the day appointments with GPs, advanced nurse practitioners, nurse practitioners and extended care practitioners.

All four hubs provide GP extended hours hubs and core hours GP appointments for approximately 330,000 patients registered with the 53 GP practices within NHS Leicester City Clinical Commissioning Group.

Additionally, the Merlyn Vaz Health and Social Care Centre is also available for pre-booked and walk-in services to patients from across all 3 CCG areas of Leicester City, Leicestershire and Rutland.

The four sites have approximately 96,000 patients contacts per annum.

The care centres are variously staffed by GPs, nurse practitioners, nurses and reception staff. About 80% of the staff are part-time and many work for other health care providers in addition to DHU. Other staff employed elsewhere across DHU also work in this service.

During this inspection we visited Westcotes Health Centre and Saffron Health Centre. In addition, we conducted part of the inspection at DHU’s administrative centre at Fosse House, 6 Smith Way, Enderby, Leicester, LE19 1SX.

DHU Health Care C.I.C. is registered with CQC to provide the regulated activities of;

• Diagnostic and screening procedures

• Family planning

• Maternity and midwifery services

• Surgical procedures

• Transport services, triage and medical advice provided remotely

• Treatment of disease, disorder or injury

Updated 23 April 2020

This service is rated as Good overall.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive focused inspection at Westcotes Health Centre on 4 March 2020. The inspection was part of our inspection programme. The service had not been previously inspected.

At this inspection we found:

• The service had good systems to ensure patients received safe and effective care and treatment.
• There was an effective system to identify and help safeguard people from abuse.
• The service routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. It ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence-based guidelines.
• Staff involved and treated people with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• Patients were able to access care and treatment from the service within an appropriate timescale for their needs.
• The joint users of premises and NHS Property Services did not always liaise effectively or give the necessary assurances regarding premises despite the best efforts of the provider.
• Although patient feedback gathered by the provider was positive, it represented a very small percentage of patient contacts and was conducted using only the Family and Friends test which did not provide either qualitative or quantitive feedback which the provider would be able to consider and use to improve services.
• Feedback we received through CQC comment cards demonstrated a high level of patient satisfaction with the service provided.
• There was a strong focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation.
• Staff expressed positive views on the service and managers.
• The governance structure provided essential oversight of performance and clinical effectiveness.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Improve their process and systems for monitoring service level agreements and joint working arrangements with other healthcare providers where DHU used facilities used by another. This included health and safety and risk assessments on environmental matters.
• Undertake a review of their process of chaperoning at sites where the sole receptionist was required to perform the duty to ensure it posed no risk to either waiting patients or security.
• Implement an effective system to gather feedback on their services from patients and carers.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP

Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care