Minehead Medical Centre

Updated 6 February 2023

Minehead Medical Centre is located at:

Harley House Site

2 Irnham Road

Minehead

TA24 5DL

The provider is registered with CQC to deliver the Regulated Activities; diagnostic and screening procedures, maternity and midwifery services, family planning, treatment of disease, disorder or injury and surgical procedures.

The practice is situated within the Somerset Integrated Care Board (ICB) and delivers General Medical Services (GMS) to a patient population of about 12,500. This is part of a contract held with NHS England.

In 2021 the practice merged with another local practice and following the retirement of a number of their GP workforce, the practice moved to an employee owned trust (EOT) in July 2022. An employee ownership trust holds a permanent or long-term shareholding in a company on trust for the benefit of all the company’s employees. An EOT provides indirect employee ownership of a company. The EOT governance consisted of a group of company directors and a board of trustees which held the directors to account.

There is a team of five salaried GPs with a whole time equivalent (WTE) of 2.5. The practice has an acute care team consisting of primary care practitioners and a nursing team consisting of four practice nurses, three healthcare assistants and a phlebotomist. The clinical teams were supported by administration and reception teams. The practice management team consisted of a practice manager, deputy practice manager and HR lead, finance lead, and IT and data lead.

The practice is open between 8.15 am to 6.30 pm Monday to Friday. The practice offers a range of appointment types including book on the day, telephone consultations and advance appointments.

Out of hours services can be accessed by calling NHS 111.

Updated 6 February 2023

We carried out an announced focused inspection at Minehead Medical Centre on 2 November 2022. Overall, the practice is rated as requires improvement.

Safe – Requires improvement

Effective – Requires improvement

Well-led – Requires improvement

Following our previous inspection on 3 August 2015, the practice was rated good overall and for all key questions. Because of the assurance received from our review of information we carried forward the ratings for the following key questions:

Caring – Good

Responsive – Good

The full reports for previous inspections can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Minehead Medical Centre on our website at www.cqc.org.uk

Why we carried out this inspection

We carried out this inspection in line with our inspection priorities and inspected the following key questions:

• Safe
• Effective
• Well led

How we carried out the inspection

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site.

This included:

• Conducting staff interviews using video conferencing.
• Completing clinical searches on the practice’s patient records system (this was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements).
• Reviewing patient records to identify issues and clarify actions taken by the provider.
• Requesting evidence from the provider.
• A short site visit.

Our findings

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.

We found that:

• Safeguarding processes were not established or operated effectively.
• Medicine reviews did not always contain necessary information.
• Safety alerts were not always actioned appropriately.
• Processes to ensure staff had received or were up to date with training, were not embedded.
• Not all staff had received an appraisal.
• Staff did not always have access to appropriate support or clinical supervision.
• The overall governance arrangements were not always effective.
• The practice did not have clear and effective processes for managing risks, issues and performance.

The areas where the provider must make improvements are:

• Ensure patients are protected from abuse and improper treatment.
• Establish effective systems and processes to ensure good governance in accordance with the fundamental standards of care.
• Ensure sufficient numbers of suitably qualified, competent, skilled and experienced persons are deployed to meet the fundamental standards of care and treatment.
• Ensure persons employed in the provision of the regulated activity receive the appropriate support, training, professional development, supervision and appraisal necessary to enable them to carry out the duties.

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

• Take action to improve uptake of child immunisations and cervical screening.
• Take steps to embed effective monitoring of blank prescriptions.
• Take steps to ensure fire alarm and Legionella testing are conducted consistently.

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

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Hospitals and Interim Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services