England’s Chief Inspector of General Practice has placed a Huddersfield GP practice - Clifton House and Nook Group Practice - into special measures following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission in June.
Inspectors rated the practice inadequate for safety effectiveness and well led and requires improvement for responsiveness and good for caring
Overall the service has been rated as inadequate. A full report of the inspection can be found on our website.
The report highlights a number of areas of concern including:
Inspectors could see that whilst the lead clinician had the required training in safeguarding, inspectors did not see evidence that mandatory training in safeguarding, health and safety, fire safety, basic life support, infection control and information governance had been completed by all staff. Data showed some patient outcomes were low compared to the national average. There was no meaningful audit activity to drive improvements to patient outcomes.
Information about services and how to complain was available. However, detailed responses to complaints were not recorded and there was no evidence of learning from complaints being shared across the staff team.
The provider could not produce a gas safety certificate for either the premises or for the boiler at the Clifton House site.
Alison Holbourn, Deputy Chief Inspector of General Practice for the North, said:
“The practice told us they had a clear aspiration to deliver high quality care and promote good outcomes for patients. However, inspectors did not see effective progress against areas identified within the provider’s business development plan. For example, tasks to establish a practice website had been achieved but staff appraisals were still overdue."
“I was concerned to note that the system for tracking incidents was lacking - the approach to reviewing them was insufficient. There had been four significant events recorded in the last year. One of these related to patient difficulties in accessing appointments at The Nook branch surgery."
“The surgery gave us assurances that they had adequate numbers of staff in order to provide responsive services. When we reviewed the number of appointments available over two random weeks we saw that appointment capacity was variable and that GP clinics were sometimes cancelled at short notice due to a lack of clinical staff."
“It is important that the people who are registered with the Clifton House and Nook Group Practice can rely on getting high quality care and due to the concerns identified during the inspection, CQC has placed this service into special measures. It will be inspected again within six months if they are still operating. The service will be kept under review and if needed could be escalated to urgent enforcement action and if there is not enough improvement we will move to close the service.”
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