Background to this inspection
Updated
19 January 2021
Kingsthorpe Medical Centre is a GP practice situated in Kingsthorpe, Northamptonshire, providing primary medical services to patients living in Kingsthorpe and surrounding areas. This practice is situated within the Northamptonshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and provides services to patients under the terms of a General Medical Services (GMS) contract.
The provider is registered with CQC to deliver the following Regulated Activities: Diagnostic & screening procedures; treatment of disease, disorder or injury; maternity and midwifery services; and family planning. At the time of this review the practice patient list size was 6,059.
The National General Practice Profile states that 86% of the practice population is from a White ethnic background, with the remaining 14% originating from Asian, Black, Mixed, or other ethnic backgrounds. Information published by Public Health England rates the level of deprivation within the practice population group as five on a scale of one to ten, with level one representing the highest level of deprivation.
The practice has two GP partners (one male, one female), and uses two regular locums mainly to cover planned absence. Other clinical staff consist of four practice nurses (one of being a nurse prescriber) and a health care assistant. There is a practice manager who is supported by a team of administrative and reception staff.
The practice is open from 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday. When the practice is closed, services are provided by Integrated Care 24 Limited via the NHS 111 service.
The practice website is: www.kingsthorpemedicalcentre.com/
Updated
19 January 2021
We previously carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Kingsthorpe Medical Centre on 25 October 2018 as part of our inspection programme. We rated the practice as Good overall, however we found a breach of regulation and rated Safe as Requires Improvement. You can read the full report by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Kingsthorpe Medical Centre on our website at
We are mindful of the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on our regulatory activities. We took into account the resulting exceptional circumstances when considering the type of inspection which was appropriate, necessary and proportionate. We also considered the type of information and evidence we needed. As a result of this we chose to carry out a desk-based review.
We carried out a desk-based review on 9 July 2020 to confirm that the practice had carried out its plan to meet the legal requirements relating to the breach of regulation we identified during the previous inspection on 25 October 2018.
We found that improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of the regulation and we have amended the rating for this practice accordingly. The practice is now rated as Good for the provision of safe services. We previously rated the practice as Good for providing effective, caring, responsive and well-led services.
During this desk-based review we looked at a range of documents submitted by the practice to demonstrate how they had met the requirement notice. The documents we looked at included those relating to:
- Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks for new and existing staff.
- Recruitment checks for new staff, including relating to completed training.
- A system for monitoring and delivering a programme of staff vaccinations.
- Cleaning schedules and risk assessments relating to Control Of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH).
During this desk-based review we looked at the following question:
Are services safe?
We found that this service was providing a safe service in accordance with the relevant regulations:
- The practice had implemented and maintained a system to carry out the necessary DBS checks for all staff, and was monitoring that this was taking place consistently.
- All staff had received the necessary DBS checks.
- All staff had received the necessary recruitment checks.
- Staff vaccinations had been maintained in line with current guidance.
- The practice was working to cleaning schedules which formed part of a comprehensive cleaning plan.
- The practice used appropriate Control Of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) risk assessments.
The areas where the provider should make improvements are:
- Increase the uptake of childhood immunisations.
- Review and improve the process for exception reporting for QOF (Quality and Outcome Framework).
- Continue to improve national GP patient survey results and patient feedback, particularly in relation to involvement in decisions about care and treatment.
- Develop a system to engage the patient to encourage them to come forward if they have communication or information needs due to a disability or sensory loss (as required by the Accessible Information Standard).
Details of our findings and the evidence supporting our ratings are set out in the evidence table.
Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP
Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care