Connect Healthcare Rotherham CIC

Updated 8 April 2022

Connect Healthcare Rotherham CIC is located in Rotherham at:

• Valley Health Centre, Saville Street, Dalton, Rotherham, South Yorkshire, S65 3HD.

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

The provider is a federation of 29 GP practices located across Rotherham and provides several NHS services to the local population on behalf of its member practices. The main service offered is a GP extended access service, which the provider operates through an alternative provider medical services (AMPS) contract. Alongside this, the provider operates other smaller NHS contracts, including the provision of physiotherapy services and COVID-19 treatment services. They also provide support services to its member practices, such as providing additional staff resources and managing staff training.

The provider is situated within the NHS Rotherham Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and provides services to a population of over 260,000. The provider offers services from several locations throughout Rotherham, including:

• Broom Lane Medical Centre, Broom Lane, Rotherham S60 3EW
• Dinnington Group Practice, New Street, Dinnington, Sheffield, S25 2EZ
• Valley Health Centre, Saville Street, Rotherham, S65 3HD
• Kilnhurst Medical Centre, Highthorn Road, Kilnhurst, Mexborough, S64 5UP
• Ridgeway Medical Centre, 14 Ridgeway, Rotherham, S65 3PG

How we inspected this service

Throughout the pandemic, CQC has continued to regulate and respond to risk. However, taking into account the circumstances arising as a result of the pandemic, and in order to reduce risk, we have conducted our inspections differently.

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site. This was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements.

This included:

• Conducting staff interviews using video conferencing
• Conducting in-person staff interviews
• Requesting evidence from the provider
• Conducting a staff questionnaire
• Requesting and reviewing patient feedback
• A short site visit

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 8 April 2022

This service is rated as Good 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? – Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive at Connect Healthcare Rotherham CIC (Community Interest Company) on 17 March 2022 as part of our inspection programme. As part of this, we also conducted remote staff interviews on 10 March 2022.

Connect Healthcare Rotherham CIC is a federation of 29 GP practices based within Rotherham, South Yorkshire. The federation provides several services on behalf of its member practices, including GP extended access services, physiotherapy services, COVID-19 treatment services, as well as additional staffing resources and staff training services.

At the time of our inspection, the location did not have a registered manager in post. However, the service’s medical director was in the process of registering to this role. 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 spoke with and received feedback from nine members of staff and received 24 comments from people who use the service.

Our key findings were:

• Staff had the information needed to deliver safe care and treatment.
• Staff worked together and with other organisations to deliver effective care and treatment.
• Staff kept up-to-date with any changes to clinical practice, and the service was actively involved in quality improvement activity.
• Staff treated patients with kindness and compassion, and respected their privacy and dignity. Staff helped patients to be involved in decisions about their care and treatment.
• The service organised and delivered services to meet patients’ needs. Patients were able to access care and treatment within appropriate timescales, and the service took complaints and concerns seriously.
• The service had a clear vision and strategy, which created a culture of high-quality sustainable care. There were clear responsibilities, roles and systems of accountability to support good governance, and leaders had the capacity and capability to deliver high quality, sustainable care.

We saw the following outstanding practice:

• The provider worked proactively and effectively with its staff, its member practices and other local stakeholders to identify and provide specialist services to improve the standard of care and treatment for their local community. Staff worked quickly to take on and implement new services when required, such as in operating a dedicated COVID-19 treatment site that patients from any member practice that were suspected of having contracted COVID-19 could receive urgent treatment at.

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.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• The provider should improve oversight of all electronic tasks and referral requests to ensure these are acted upon in a timely manner.
• The provider should implement a system to ensure complaints and significant events from jointly delivered services (e.g. physiotherapy services) are reviewed and shared with all teams.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP

Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care