Saltley Centre for Health Care

Updated 20 August 2019

Saltley Centre for Health Care is a merger of two practices (Saltley Centre for Health Care and Fernbank Medical Practice). The practices formally merged in January 2019 and registered with CQC under a new provider organisation Saltley and Fernbank Medical Practice in April 2019.

Saltley Centre for Health Care (SCfH) is registered with CQC as the main practice and is located at 1 Cradock Road, Saltey, Birmingham B8 1RZ. Fernbank Medical Practice (FMP) is the branch practice and is located at 508-516 Alum Rock Road, Birmingham B8 3HX. The main and branch practices are situated approximately one mile from each other in an inner city area of Birmingham.

The provider is registered with CQC to deliver the Regulated Activities; diagnostic and screening procedures, family planning, maternity and midwifery services, surgical procedures and treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

Saltley Centre for Health Care is situated within the Birmingham and Solihull Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and provides services to 11,755 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 four clinical (GP) partners and one non-clinical partner. Staff usually work from one practice location although there is some flexibility with this. At SCfH there is one GP partner, two long term locum GPs, two clinical pharmacists (independent prescribers), three practice nurses and one health care assistant. At FMP there are three GP partners and two long term locum GPs. Practice nurse cover is provided by a locum nurse a Health Care assistant from SCfH does one day each week at FMP. Patients have access to both male and female clinical staff.

The practice is led by a Business Manager and Operations Manager. The main and branch practice each have a site manager and are supported by a team of administrative staff.

The practice is part of SDS My Healthcare Federation which provides a range of additional services to the member practices including extended access and various clinics including specialist diabetes, musculoskeletal and frailty clinics.

The practice opening times at Saltely Centre for Health care are 9am to 7pm Monday to Friday and at Fernbank Medical Practice 8.30am to 6.30pm. In addition, Fernbank Medical Practice hosts an extended access hub on a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evening and on a Saturday.

The practice population is younger than the CCG and national average. For example, 29% of the practice population are under 18 years compared to the CCG average of 25% and England average 21%. 10% of the practice population are over 65 years compared to the CCG 13% and England 17%. The National General Practice Profile states that 66% of the practice population is from an Asian background, 21% white with the remaining population originating from black, mixed or other non-white ethnic groups. Information published by Public Health England, rates the level of deprivation within the practice population group as one, on a scale of one to ten. Level one represents the highest levels of deprivation and level ten the lowest. Male life expectancy is 76 years compared to the national average of 79 years. Female life expectancy is 82 years compared to the national average of 83 years.

Updated 20 August 2019

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Saltley Centre for Health Care on 13 June 2019 as part of our inspection programme.

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 requires improvement overall and requires improvement for all population groups.

We rated the practice as good for providing safe services because:

• There were effective systems for keeping patients safe from abuse and harm.
• Risks were generally well managed. The practice was aware that they had a staffing issues and were reliant on the support of locum staff but had plans in place to address.
• There were effective systems for managing incidents, complaints and safety alerts.
• Patient records seen were comprehensive and demonstrated appropriate management of patients care and treatment needs.

We rated the practice as requires improvement for providing effective, caring, responsive and well led services and all population groups because:

• Patient outcomes as reported through national data (prior to the practice merger) showed mixed performance in relation to local and national averages. In particular, diabetes indicators and uptake of national cancer screening was low.
• There was mixed feedback from patients about the quality of consultations, the practice hoped that improvements in staffing would help improve patient satisfaction.
• Patient feedback about how they accessed care and treatment in a timely way was below local and national averages. Issues relating to access impacted on all population groups.
• Leaders were focussed on aligning the practices following the merger to support future resilience and promote high quality care. They were aware of some of the challenges faced in particular around workforce and were working to address those. However, further work was still needed to identify other areas of priority relating to effective and responsive care and in the development of clear action plans for monitoring success.
• Although there were systems for sharing learning, this did not currently extend to all staff.

Whilst we found no breaches of regulations, the provider should:

• Complete safeguarding training requirements for all clinical staff in line with the competency framework as set out in the intercollegiate guidance.
• Improve systems to ensure appropriate supervision of non-medical prescribers.
• Improve systems for ensuring all staff are involved in learning from areas such as incidents, complaints, alerts and best practice discussions.
• Review patient outcome and satisfaction data in which the practices have been identified as an outlier to identify how uptake and services could be further improved.
• Review systems for supporting patients who have been recently bereaved.

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

Updated 20 August 2019

Updated 20 August 2019

Updated 20 August 2019

Updated 20 August 2019

Updated 20 August 2019

Updated 20 August 2019