The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated Medway Medical Centre in Gillingham, Kent, inadequate, and placed it in special measures following an inspection in September.
Medway Medical Centre delivers general medical services to around 8,360 people in Gillingham.
The inspection was prompted in part after NHS England informed CQC of anonymous whistleblowing concerns they had received.
Following the inspection, the overall rating for the practice, as well as the areas of safe, effective, and well-led have dropped from good to inadequate. Responsive has declined from good to requires improvement.
CQC have imposed urgent conditions upon the practice to restrict people from registering with the service . Two warning notices have also been served to focus their attention on making improvements around safe care and treatment, and good governance.
The service has also been placed into special measures which means it will be kept under close review to make sure people are safe and, if CQC do not propose to cancel the provider's registration, there will be a re-inspection to check for significant improvements.
Neil Cox, CQC deputy director of operations in the south, said:
"When we inspected Medway Medical Centre, we found a GP practice that wasn't performing to the required standards to ensure local people were getting the service and treatment they deserve.
"During this inspection, we identified five incidents where people using the service were potentially at risk of or had sustained serious harm or injury. For example, we identified someone who had attended the practice showing symptoms of a serious illness. Staff told them there were no appointments available and to return the following day. Staff failed to identify how seriously unwell the person was and didn't ask for advice from the clinician on site.
"We identified widespread shortfalls across the service including the assessment of risk, management of medicines, safeguarding, and governance.
"The practice had an ineffective communication system which meant staff didn't always have the information they needed to deliver safe care and treatment.
"We have imposed urgent conditions upon the practice and also issued two warning notices to ensure we see rapid and significant improvements. In the meantime we will continue to monitor the service closely to ensure significant improvements are made. If we are not assured people are receiving safe care, we will not hesitate to take further enforcement action to ensure people are receiving the high standard of care they deserve."
Inspectors found:
- The practice was unable to demonstrate that staff had the skills, knowledge and experience to carry out their roles.
- Safeguarding registers weren't accurate, meaning there was no way for staff to assure themselves they had clinical oversight of where the risks were.
- The provider was unable to demonstrate staff had always undertaken disclosure and barring service (DBS) checks where required.
- The practice was unable to demonstrate it complied with the relevant safety alerts issued by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
- Leaders could not demonstrate that they had the capacity and skills to deliver high quality sustainable care.
The report will be published on Medway Medical Centre's profile on this website.
Contact
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