Archived: Cambs GP Network Limited

Updated 7 December 2021

Cambs GP Network is a federation of GP practices in Cambridge, Ely, Royston, Milton, and the surrounding villages. Cambs GP Network is a private limited company with a social enterprise ethos.

Although member practices retain their individual identity and staff, the Cambs GP Network supports a number of health care hubs, typically large practices with good access, where extended services (both in terms of timing and scope) can be delivered as close to patients' homes as possible. Routine appointments for nursing procedures, monitoring and management of long-term conditions and assessment of new problems are available on weekday evenings and at weekends.

There was a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who is registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

The Cambs GP Network is made up of a board of directors, a senior management team and 31 member practices.

Services are delivered from five practices at the time of inspection; St Mary’s Surgery Ely, Comberton Surgery, Comberton, Nuffield Road Medical Centre, Cambridge, Royston Health Centre, Royston and Milton Surgery, Milton. Services are offered seven days a week, 365 days a year between 6pm and 10pm on weekdays and 8am and 2pm on weekends.

All appointments offered are for routine care, and can be with a GP, nurse, or healthcare assistant. All appointments are pre-booked via the patients’ own GP practice or 111. The service does not offer emergency care or home visits.

As part of this inspection, we did not visit the sites where the provider delivers regulated activity.

How we inspected this service

Before the inspection, we reviewed information held by CQC on our internal systems.

During the inspection we spoke with the staff present including the chief executive officer and the clinical lead. We made observations of the facilities and service provision and reviewed documents, records and information held by the service.

Updated 7 December 2021

This provider is rated as Good overall.

The key questions at this inspection are rated as:

Are services safe? – Requires Improvement

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Woodlands Surgery on 23 July 2019 as part of our inspection programme. This was the first inspection of the provider since services commenced in September 2018.

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.

At this inspection, we found that:

• The provider had established systems to ensure appointments that had been booked were appropriate to the service.
• Patients received effective care and treatment that met their needs.
• Patients had timely access to initial assessment, diagnosis and treatment. Patients did not have long waiting times to be seen by the healthcare professional.
• Patients told us they valued the service, were involved in care and treatment decisions and did not have long waiting times.
• Staff told us morale was high and they felt well supported by the management team.
• The provider had a realistic strategy and supporting business plans to achieve its priorities.

We rated the provider as Requires Improvement for providing Safe services because:

• We found high-risk medicines had been prescribed to one patient without evidence of up-to-date blood monitoring results for the patient.
• The provider did not have complete oversight of all building and safety risk assessments for all of the premises used to deliver services. In addition to this, where a risk assessment had been completed, the provider did not have oversight of the progress of the actions required.
• The provider did not have oversight of references for zero hour contract staff.
• The provider did not evidence that learning outcomes from safety events were shared across the whole staff team.

We rated the provider as good for providing effective, caring, responsive and well-led services.

The areas where the provider must make improvements are:

• Establish effective systems and processes to ensure good governance in accordance with the fundamental standards of care.
• Ensure recruitment procedures are established and operated effectively to ensure only fit and proper persons are employed.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Continue to develop quality improvement activity to monitor and improve the quality of care offered to patients.
• Review and improve the system for reviewing competency of staff employed.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BS BM BMedSci MRCGP

Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care