CQC places Kensington Park Surgery into Special Measures

England’s Chief Inspector of General Practice has placed a Liverpool GP into special measures following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission.

A specialist team of inspectors rated the service provided by Kensington Park Surgery in Liverpool as Inadequate for being safe and well-led, Requires improvement for being effective and responsive, and Good for being caring. The practice has been given an overall rating of Inadequate.

Under CQC’s new programme of inspections, led by Professor Steve Field, Chief Inspector of General Practice, all of England’s GP practices are being inspected and given a rating.

Kensington Park Surgery was inspected in October 2014 by an inspection team which included a GP advisor, and a practice manager. A full report of this inspection has been published on this website today. 

Inspectors received positive comments from patients they spoke to during the inspection. Patients were involved in decisions about their care and treatment, and were treated with dignity, compassion and respect. However, inspectors also identified some concerns.

Although staff understood their responsibilities to raise concerns, reviews and investigations were not sufficiently thorough, and lessons learned were not communicated widely enough to support improvement.

Inspectors found that there were limited systems in place to monitor and evaluate the safe and effective running of the practice, and audits that were undertaken focused on medicines management rather than patient outcomes.

Not all staff had completed mandatory training courses such as annual basic life support and some staff told inspectors that they did not always feel supported by the management team.

Concerns were also raised with regards to the security of prescription pads and limited record keeping.

The Care Quality Commission has identified a number of areas for improvement, including:

• The practice must review the systems for assessing and monitoring the quality and safety of service provision and take steps to ensure risks are managed appropriately.
• The practice must review the systems in place to support the staff team to learn and develop the competencies and skills required to carry out their roles safely.
• The practice must review the systems in place to maintain the security of prescriptions including the maintenance of records for auditing purposes.

CQC has been working closely with Liverpool Clinical Commissioning Group and NHS England to support the practice while it addresses the issues identified by the inspection.

Sue McMillan, Deputy Chief Inspector of General Practice said:

“Patients should be able to expect high quality and consistent care from their GP practice. It is important that the people who are registered with Kensington Park Surgery can rely on getting the high quality care which everyone is entitled to receive from their GP.

“While patients we met spoke highly of the care they received and the practice was found to be caring, we also found some significant areas of concern. I do not believe that the practice is likely to resolve its challenges without external support. This is why we are placing the practice into special measures.

“With the right support, I expect this practice to be transformed. After a period of six months we will inspect again to check whether sufficient improvements have been made. If we find that the service provided by this practice remains inadequate, we will consider taking steps to cancel its registration with CQC.”

Patients registered with practices being placed into special measures should be aware that the package of support being offered by NHS England and the Royal College of GPs will ensure that there are no immediate risks to patient safety at these GP practices whilst improvements are being made. These practices will not close.

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For further information please contact CQC Regional Engagement Manager Kirstin Hannaford on 0191 233 3629. Alternatively, the CQC press office can be contacted on 0207 448 9401 or out of hours on 07789 876508.