Archived: BHSF Medical Practice

Updated 7 August 2019

BHSF Medical Practice is an independent health care provider which provides the general public with private travel health services including Yellow Fever (registered location with NaTHNac ) and private GP consultations which are registerable with CQC. The service is available to people over the age of 18 years.

This service is registered with CQC under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 in respect of some, but not all, of the services it provides. There are some exemptions from regulation by CQC which relate to types of service and these are set out in Schedule 2 of The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. At BHSF Medical Practice services are provided to patients under arrangements made by their employer. These types of arrangements are exempt by law from CQC regulation. Therefore, at BHSF Medical Practice, we only inspected the services delivered under the regulated activities.

The service is registered with CQC under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 to provide the regulated activities of diagnostic and screening procedures and for the treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

BHSF Medical Practice is located in central Birmingham at Cornerblock, 2 Cornwall Street, Birmingham, West Midlands, B3 2DL. The practice is based on the fifth floor of a multi-storey building which is accessible by lifts. The service is open for appointments Monday to Friday between 8.30am and 5pm. Staffing consists of two sessional GPs and two nurses supported by an administrative team. There is a Chief Medical Officer a Clinical Standards Manager, Operations Manager and Director of Strategy who also support the running of the service.

When we visited the service on the 12 June 2019, the inspection team consisted of a lead CQC inspector and a GP Specialist advisor to CQC.

Before visiting, we reviewed information we gathered from the provider through the provider information return and other information we hold about the service. During the inspection we spoke with the Chief Medical Officer, the Director of Strategy, a GP, nurse and administrative staff.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we always ask the following five questions:

• Is it safe?
• Is it effective?
• Is it caring?
• Is it responsive to people’s needs?
• Is it well-led?

These questions therefore formed the framework for the areas we looked at during the inspection.

Updated 7 August 2019

This service is rated as Requires improvement overall.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Requires improvement

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Requires improvement

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at BHSF Medical Practice as part of our inspection programme.

The service was previously inspected in June 2018 as Newhall Medical Practice - Newhall Street under the provider organisation,The Newhall Medical Practice Limited. We found the service was not providing safe and well led services and there were breaches in regulation 13 and 17 for which we issued requirement notices.

The service became part of the provider organisation, BHSF Medical Limited in 2015, and moved address in May 2018, to Cornerblock, 2 Cornwall Street, Birmingham B3 2DL, this had resulted in some changes to the senior management team as the service operated the BHSF corporate governance structure. At the time of our inspection in June 2018, these changes had not been reflected in the CQC registration. Following our inspection, the practice updated its registration. BHSF Medical Practice registered with CQC as a location for the provider BHSF Medical Practice Ltd in October 2018.

The Chief Medical Officer is the registered manager. A registered manager is a person who is registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

As part of our inspection we also asked for CQC comment cards to be completed by patients prior to our inspection. We received 27 completed comment cards where people who used the service shared their views and experiences of the service. All comments received were positive about the service.

Our key findings were:

• There were some systems and processes in place to keep people safe. However, these were not always identified, sufficiently well managed or embedded to ensure their effectiveness.
• The service reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. It ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence based guidelines.
• Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care, feedback we received from patients was positive.
• The service took account of patient needs and preferences. Patients could access the service in a timely manner.
• There was a lack of effective leadership oversight to ensure good governance. Systems and processes were not always embedded to ensure risks were identified and managed.

The areas where the provider must make improvements as they are in breach of regulations are:

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

• Establish effective systems and processes to ensure good governance in accordance with the fundamental standards of care.

(You can see full details of the regulations not being met at the end of this report).

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Develop a systematic programme of ongoing quality monitoring and improvement activity.
• Review the arrangements in place for supporting patients who may experience barriers to accessing the service, to ensure they can access and use services on an equal basis to others.
• Consider ways to increase patient feedback to help improve the service.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care