CQC places Wyken Medical Centre into Special Measures

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

The Care Quality Commission has found the quality of care at Wyken Medical Centre, in Brixham Drive, Coventry, to be Inadequate following an inspection carried out in February. A full report of the inspection has been published today.

The practice provides a primary medical service to 2,100 patients living at the outskirts of Coventry.

Under CQC’s new programme of inspections, all of England’s GP practices are being given a rating according to whether they are safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led.

Inspectors found that while staff at Wyken Medical Centre offered a caring service, systems to monitor and learn from incidents and to monitor the quality of the service were not effective.

The practice was not following procedures and guidance in a number of areas, including recruitment of staff, and it could not always provide evidence care and treatment was delivered in line with professional guidelines.

The report highlights a number of areas where improvements must be made, including:

• The service needs to operate effective recruitment processes and ensure the required information is available regarding all staff at the practice.
• Effective arrangements for assessing, monitoring and improving the quality of the service provided by the practice need to be put in place.
• The practice needed to ensure effective arrangements for identifying, assessing and managing risks to people’s health and safety.
• Systems need to be put in place to ensure clinicians are kept up to date with national and local guidance and guidelines for the care and treatment of patients.
• The practice needed to ensure learning from audits, significant events and complaints is taken into account in the assessment and delivery of care and treatment.
• Providing other services, such as the out of hours primary care services and the ambulance service, with information about patients at the end of their life or whose health might deteriorate suddenly to help ensure their needs and wishes are properly considered and taken into account so their care can be planned and delivered accordingly

CQC is working closely with Coventry and Rugby Clinical Commissioning Group and NHS England to support the practice while it addresses the issues identified by the inspection.

Janet Williamson, Deputy Chief Inspector of General Practice and Dentistry in CQC’s Central region said:

“It is important that the people who are registered with the Wyken Medical Centre can rely on getting the high quality care which everyone is entitled to receive from their GP.

"Although the patients said they were treated with dignity and respect and that staff were kind, we also found that care and treatment was not always delivered in line with best practice.

“We know that the Wyken Medical Centre has acknowledged the areas where action must be taken. We have found significant areas of concern, which is why we are placing the practice into special measures - so opening the way to support from NHS England among others.

“We will continue to monitor this practice and we will inspect again in six months to check whether improvements have been made. I am hopeful that the practice will do what is required for the sake of its patients, but if we find that the service remains inadequate, we will consider taking further action.”

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