England’s Chief Inspector of General Practice has rated Preston GP Practice, Clayton Brook Surgery, as Inadequate and placed them into special measures following an inspection by the CQC in October.
Under CQC’s programme of inspections, all of England’s GP practices are given a rating in five key areas: safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led.
The practice was rated as Inadequate for safe, effective, caring and well-led domains, and rated as ‘Requires Improvement’ for responsive. The services provided by the practice have been rated as Inadequate overall.
Alison Holbourn, Deputy Chief Inspector of General Practice at CQC said:
“We found that people registered with Clayton Brook Surgery aren’t getting the high quality care which everyone should expect to receive from their GP practice.
“It was worrying to see that some staff at the surgery were working in roles for which they had insufficient professional competencies or training. This was reflected in the poor staffing levels and lack of training programme that we found at the surgery.
“There was little evidence of commitment by the practice to long term learning and improvement.
“I do not believe that the practice is likely to resolve its challenges without external support; placing the practice into special measures ensures that action will be taken to improve the quality of care for patients.”
A full report of this inspection has been published.
Some of the areas where CQC have told the practice they must improve are:
- Put systems in place to ensure staff are appropriately trained and that training remains current for their role.
- Ensure that staff are not working outside their level of professional competency
- The surgery should put systems in place to ensure that risks associated with medications, information handling are addressed.
The service will be kept under review and if needed could be escalated to urgent enforcement action. Where necessary, another inspection will be conducted within a further six months, and if there is not enough improvement we will move to close the service by adopting our proposal to remove this location or cancel the provider’s registration.
Patients registered with the practices being placed into special measures should be aware that a package of support is offered by NHS England and the Royal College of GPs to ensure that there are no immediate risks to patient safety at these GP practices whilst improvements are being made.
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For further information please contact CQC Regional Engagement Officer Kerri James on 07464 92 9966 or kerri.james@cqc.org.uk.
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