St Agnes Surgery

Background to this inspection

Updated 8 November 2016

The St Agnes Surgery provides primary medical services to people living in St Agnes and surrounding areas including Mount Hawke, Porthtowan, Blackwater and Perranporth. There is also a branch practice at Mount Hawke and patients can choose which practice they would prefer to attend.

The local population is rated as being in the seventh decile for deprivation, which is on a scale of one to ten. The lower the decile the more deprived an area is compared to the national average. The practice population ethnic profile is predominantly White British. The average male life expectancy for the practice area is 80 years which matches the national average of 79 years; female life expectancy is 84 years which also matches the national average of 83 years.

At the time of our inspection there were approximately 7,900 patients registered at the St Agnes Surgery. There are four full time GP partners and two part time partners, four male and two female and one part time female salaried GP. In addition the GPs are supported by five practice nurses, a healthcare assistant, a practice manager, and additional administrative and reception staff. The practice also has a dispensary at each location staffed by five dispensing staff within the practice. The practice is a training practice for doctors training to become GPs.

Patients using the practice also have access to community staff including district nurses, health visitors, midwives, physiotherapists and counsellors.

The practice is open from Monday to Friday, between the hours of 8.30am and 6.30pm. Appointments are available between these times and could be booked up to eight weeks in advance. There are early appointments on Wednesdays and Fridays for people unable to access appointments during normal opening times. GPs also offered patients telephone consultations, and performed home visits where appropriate. During evenings and weekends, when the practice is closed, patients are directed to an Out of Hours service delivered by another provider.

The practice also holds a morning surgery between 8:30am to 11:30am in the branch practice in Mount Hawke.

The practice has a General Medical Services (GMS) contract. With this contract the NHS specifies what the GPs, as independent providers, are expected to do and provides the funding for this.

The St Agnes Surgery provides regulated activities from the main practice at Pengarth Road,St Agnes, Cornwall TR5 0TN and their branch practice at Mount Hawke, Short Cross Road Truro TR4 8UE

Overall inspection

Good

Updated 8 November 2016

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced focused inspection at the St Agnes Surgery on 30 August 2016. This was to review the actions taken by the provider as a result of our issuing two legal requirements. In October 2015 the practice did not have safe systems in place for the safe management of medicines and appropriate risk assessments were not in place to ensure staff within the practice had received appropriate checks and up to date mandatory training.

Overall the practice has been rated as Good following our findings, with safe and well led now rated as good. This report should be read in conjunction with our report published on 4 February 2016 where the effective, responsive and caring domains were rated as Good. This can be done by selecting the 'all reports' link for St Agnes Surgery on our website at www.cqc.org.uk

Our key findings across all the areas we inspected were as follows:

New procedures following the national guidelines for storing and recording the use of blank prescriptions were in place to ensure national guidance is followed.

New arrangements for prescribing under Patient Group Directives had been put in place to ensure all were authorised for use in the practice.

We found all staff who acted as chaperones had been trained for the role and had received a disclosure and barring service check (DBS). (DBS checks identify whether a person has a criminal record or is on an official list of people barred from working in roles where they may have contact with children or adults who may be vulnerable).

New processes had been put in place to ensure recruitment arrangements included all the necessary employment checks for all staff.

The provider had put in place processes and records to demonstrate risks to health, safety and welfare of people are well managed in relation to calibration of equipment and the testing of electrical equipment.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)

Chief Inspector of General Practice