The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated Glenroyd Medical in Blackpool, Lancashire as inadequate overall and placed it into special measures to protect people following an inspection from April to May.
Glenroyd Medical is run by Glenroyd Medical Centre and provides services to around 14,000 people. It has a main surgery and a branch surgery, which were both included in this inspection.
CQC carried out this visit as part of its routine monitoring of health and care services.
CQC found breaches of regulation at this inspection in relation to safe care and treatment, good management and employing appropriate people. CQC issued three warning notices to Glenroyd Medical, to focus their attention on making rapid improvements in these areas.
Following the inspection, the practice ratings overall and for being well-led have declined from outstanding to inadequate, safe has dropped from good to inadequate. Responsive has fallen from outstanding to requires improvement, effective has declined from good to requires improvement, and caring has been re-rated as good.
CQC has also placed the service into special measures which involves close monitoring to ensure people are safe while they make improvements. Special measures also provide a structured timeframe so services understand when they need to make improvements by, and what action CQC will take if this doesn’t happen.
Linda Hirst, CQC deputy director of operations in the north west said:
“When we inspected Glenroyd Medical, although we found caring staff, it was disappointing to see such a deterioration in the quality of care being provided since we last inspected. Poor leadership had led to people receiving unsafe care, and we found several areas where urgent improvements are needed to keep people safe.
“It was concerning that leaders didn’t have good enough oversight of medicines management. For example, the service didn’t have adequate policies and processes in place to ensure medicines were prescribed safely, which could put people at risk of harm.
“During the inspection, we found that the environment wasn’t well maintained, and fire safety issues hadn’t been actioned. This included fitting warning signs around the buildings, adding strips to doorframes to prevent fire and smoke from spreading, as well as testing electrical equipment. Also, the process for managing people’s safety in the event of a fire was unclear, meaning people could be put at risk in a real emergency.
“However, people were positive about the staff, and recent survey results showed people felt listened to and were treated with kindness.
“We’ve shared our findings with Glenroyd Medical so they know where improvements must be made urgently. We’ll continue to monitor the practice closely to ensure people are kept safe whilst these improvements are made.”
Inspectors found:
- Leaders didn’t listen, investigate or report safety concerns. Also, lessons weren’t learnt to keep people safe.
- Leaders didn’t follow recruitment procedures, so all the required checks on staff hadn’t taken place to ensure they were suitable for their position.
- It was unclear if all staff had received appropriate training, to ensure they were competent in their role.
The report will be published on CQC’s website in the next few days.