The Park Medical Centre

This practice is rated as Good overall.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Requires improvement

We carried out an inspection of the South Manchester General Practice Federation (SMGPF). The federation is the provider of enhanced GP access services and also offered support to their constituent practices in other forms, including as an employer of health care professionals (such as paramedics) who work within those practices for the benefit of the local population.

Our inspection included a visit to the service’s headquarters at Borchardt medical centre and to all five of the registered locations where the provider (federation) operated their enhanced GP access service from. The reports relate only to the enhanced hours service, not the core GP services operated from these locations. The GP locations are registered and inspected separately.

We carried out an inspection at the enhanced access service delivered from The Park Medical Centre on 15 August 2023 as part of a larger announced comprehensive inspection of South Manchester GP Federation (SMGPF). This was part of our planned inspection programme.

At this inspection we found:

• The federation (SMGPF) had systems to manage risk overall, but some assurance systems were not in place, as a result they were unable to demonstrate that all actions needed to mitigate risk had been taken at The Park Medical Centre. Upon visiting the site, we found that the practice had systems in place that were working as intended and had taken action to identify and mitigate risks.
• The federation routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. It ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence-based guidelines.
• Staff involved and treated patients with compassion, kindness, dignity, and respect. Patient feedback was provided for The Park Medical Centre as part of wider feedback obtained by the Brooklands and Northenden Primary Care Network (PCN). Feedback overall from patients using all locations in the PCN was positive.
• Leadership of the federation was well established and working to ensure services were delivered within a comprehensive framework of governance that would provide high-quality services. Although this framework was in place, we found several areas where assurance systems were absent or poorly embedded. Clinical areas of service delivery were safe and generally effective, however further development was still required.

Although we found no breaches of regulation, the provider should:

• Take action to embed over-arching governance systems across a range of areas including risk management, staff recruitment, training, staff appraisal and medicines management to be assured that there is effective central oversight by leadership at the federation on an ongoing basis, across all of its registered locations.
• Take action to seek patient feedback on their experience of using the enhanced hours service at the location to inform future service planning.
• Continue to consider how staff, patients and stakeholders can inform the future strategy of the organisation.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Health Care.