Archived: Hockley Medical Practice

We carried out an announced follow up inspection at Hockley Medical Practice on 28 March 2019 to follow up on concerns that we identified during our inspection of the practice in March 2018.

During our inspection in March 2018 we rated the practice as good overall with a requires improvement rating for providing safe services and requires improvement for the population group, people whose circumstances may make them vulnerable.

We rated the practice and all other population groups as good for providing effective, caring, responsive and well-led services.

During this inspection in March 2019 we based our judgement of the quality of care at this service on a combination of:

• what we found when we inspected
• information from our ongoing monitoring of data about services and
• information from the provider, patients, the public and other organisations.

During this inspection in March 2019, we found that t he practice had responded appropriately to the concerns we identified during our inspection in March 2018 and we have rated this practice as good for providing safe services and good for the population group, people whose circumstances may make them vulnerable.

• The practice had reviewed their medicines management systems to ensure patients were monitored and reviewed in line with guidelines.
• We saw the practice had effective systems for monitoring patients on high risk medicines and responding to correspondence from secondary care.
• The practice had reviewed their storage and security of prescription stationery and the practice now had an effective monitoring and audit system in place.
• The practice had improved their monitoring systems for staff training and staff vaccination information.
• The practice had acted to ensure all patients with learning disabilities had been invited for annual reviews. Staff told us it remained a significant challenge for the practice to improve uptake of appointments with this population group however they were trying to be be proactive in their approach.
• We reviewed two audits the practice had completed since our last inspection. Both audits showed improved outcomes for patients. The first audit showed improved care of post-natal patients with gestational diabetes. The second audit showed an improvement in the management of patients with newly diagnosed hypertension.
• We saw the practice was actively trying to identify carers and the number of carers on their patient list had increased slightly from 54 to 60 since our last inspection.
• We saw from published data for 2017 to 2018 that the practice had achieved an increased uptake for childhood immunisations however, uptake levels were slightly below the national target.
• From published data for 2017 to 2018 we saw that the uptake for cervical and bowel cancer screening had reduced since our last inspection. Staff we spoke with told us about the action they were taking to try and improve uptake and provided unverified data to show uptake for cervical screening between April 2018 and the time of inspection had increased when compared with data from 2017/2018.
• The practice contacted patients who failed to attend their screening appointments and was engaging with Cancer Research UK on how to increase uptake for bowel cancer screening.

Whilst we found no breaches of regulations, the provider should:

• Continue to improve the identification of carers to enable this group of patients to access the care and support they need.
• Continue to explore different methods to improve monitoring of patients with learning disabilities.
• Continue to improve uptake for childhood immunisations and cancer screening.

Details of our findings and the evidence supporting our ratings are set out in the evidence tables.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP

Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care