Archived: Maple Surgery

Updated 10 January 2019

Maple Surgery in the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) area, provides a range of alternative primary medical services to approximately 3603 registered patients living in Bar Hill and the surrounding villages.

The practice is provided by Malling Health (UK) Ltd, a limited partnership, based in Kent. Malling Health UK Ltd hold managerial and financial responsibility for the practice. They took over responsibility for the practice two years ago. They employ two GPs (one male and one female), two female practice nurses and one health care assistant. There is also a team of reception, secretarial and administration staff.

The practice provides a range of clinics and services, which are detailed in this report, and opens between the hours of 8am and 6.30pm, Monday to Friday. Outside of practice opening hours patients are able to access pre-bookable evening and weekend appointments through a network of local practices. In addition to this, a service is provided by Herts Urgent Care, by patients dialling the NHS 111 service.

According to Public Health England information, the patient population has a slightly higher than average number of patients aged 0 to 4 and a slightly lower than average number of patients aged 5 to 18 compared to the practice average across England. It has a slightly lower number of patients aged 65 and over, aged 75 and over and aged 85 and over compared to the practice average across England. Income deprivation affecting children and older people is significantly lower than the practice average across England.

Updated 10 January 2019

This practice is rated as Good overall. At the previous inspection in April 2015 the practice were rated as good overall.

The key questions at this inspection are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Requires Improvement

Are services well-led? – Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Maple Surgery on 30 November 2018 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 found that:

• The practice had clear systems, practices and processes to keep people safe and safeguarded from abuse.
• The practice did not always have oversight of the progress of actions arising from risk assessments and infection control audits.
• The practice was able to access the support of a pharmacist employed by the provider to work across all of their practices.
• The practice learned and made improvements when things went wrong.
• Childhood immunisation uptake rates were above the World Health Organisation (WHO) targets at 95%.
• Patients we spoke to were positive about the caring attitude displayed by all staff at the practice.
• The practice had only identified and supported 21 carers, this was approximately 0.58% of the practice population.
• There was no active patient participation group and the practice could not evidence any engagement with patients.
• Staff that we spoke with were positive about their experiences working at the practice.

We have rated the practice as good overall for providing effective services. However, we have rated the practice as requires improvement for providing effective services for people with long term conditions because:

• The practice performance for diabetes was lower than CCG and national averages.
• The practice performance for atrial fibrillation was lower than CCG and national averages.

We have rated the practice as requires improvement for providing responsive services because:

• Feedback from patients in relation to accessing services provided by the practice was consistently negative and lower than local and national averages.

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

• Review and implement the actions from the most recent fire risk assessment.
• Review and implement the actions from the most recent infection control audit.
• Review and improve the practice’s performance in relation to long term conditions such as diabetes and atrial fibrillation.
• Review and improve the number of carers that the practice identifies and supports.
• Review feedback gathered from patients and take actions to improve the patient experience, such as accessing the practice.
• Develop and encourage patient participation at the practice.

Details of our findings and the evidence supporting our ratings are set out in the evidence tables.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGPChief Inspector of General Practice

Updated 10 January 2019

Updated 10 January 2019

Updated 10 January 2019

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Updated 10 January 2019

Updated 10 January 2019