Burnage Health Care Practice

This practice 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? – Requires improvement

We carried out an inspection of the South Manchester General Practice Federation (SMGPF). The federation is the provider of enhanced GP access services and also offered support to their constituent practices in other forms, including as an employer of health care professionals (such as paramedics) who work within those practices for the benefit of the local population.

Our inspection included a visit to the service’s headquarters at Borchardt medical centre and to all five of the registered locations where the provider (federation) operated their enhanced GP access service from. The reports relate only to the enhanced hours service, not the core GP services operated from these locations. The GP locations are registered and inspected separately.

We carried out an inspection at the enhanced access service delivered from Burnage Health Care Practice on 14 August 2023 as part of a larger announced comprehensive inspection of South Manchester GP Federation (SMGPF). This was part of our planned inspection programme.

At this inspection we found:

• The Federation (SMGPF) had systems to manage risk overall, but assurance systems were not in place, as a result they were unable to demonstrate that all actions needed to mitigate risk had been taken at Burnage Health Care Practice (BHCP).
• The federation 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 patients with compassion, kindness, dignity, and respect. Patient feedback in relation to being treated in a caring way or about access to services could not be gathered for Burnage Health Care Practice as it was not being used as a GP surgery and this had no patients to refer to the service at that location. Feedback overall from other patients using the service was positive. We informed the provider about this.
• Leadership of the federation was well established and working to ensure services were delivered within a comprehensive framework of governance that would provide high-quality services. Although this framework was in place, we found several areas where assurance systems were absent or poorly embedded. Clinical areas of service delivery were safe and generally effective, however further development was still required.

Although we found no breaches of regulation, the provider should:

• Take action to embed over-arching governance systems across a range of areas including risk management, staff recruitment, training, staff appraisal and medicines management to be assured that there is effective central oversight by leadership at the federation on an ongoing basis, across all of its registered locations.
• Take action to seek patient feedback on their experience of using the enhanced hours service at the location to inform future service planning.
• Continue to consider how staff, patients and stakeholders can inform the future strategy of the organisation.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Health Care