Archived: Privategp.com Ltd (Private General Practice Services)

Updated 11 May 2023

PrivateGP.com Ltd is registered with the CQC to provide services from Beech House, 3 Knighton Grange Road, Stoneygate, Leicester. LE2 2LF. The service has a website at www.privategp.com

PrivateGP.com Ltd provides an alternative means for patients to receive medical consultation, examination, diagnosis and treatment by general practitioners and medical and clinical specialists. It is an independent provider which offers private GP consultations and a wide range of specialist services including functional medicine, immunisations and vaccinations, bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, nutritional medicine, mental health services, occupational health assessments, and aesthetic procedures.

The service is delivered from a private residence. There is a reception and administrative office on the ground floor, with consulting rooms on the first floor. There is limited parking on site, but street parking is available on the road outside the practice.

The service is registered to provide the regulated activities of diagnostic and screening procedures, family planning, maternity and midwifery services, treatment of disease, disorder or injury, and services in slimming clinics.

The service is available to all age groups and does not require a clinical referral. Whilst most patients will be from the Leicestershire area, the service sees people from other parts of the country.

The service is led by a GP, who is the medical director and the Chief Executive Officer. Every day management is provided by an operations manager, with a support team of three administrative/reception staff. Some input is also provided on site by clinicians working on a contractual basis, rather than being direct employees. This includes an additional GP working for the service for one or two sessions a week, and another GP undertakes some occupational health assessments for the service. A clinical psychologist provides input for some patients and normally works on site once a week.

The opening hours are 8.30am – 5pm from Monday to Thursday, and 8.30am – 4.30pm on a Friday. Patients can access face-to-face, telephone and online consultations. Home visits can be arranged when deemed necessary, but this occurs rarely.

How we inspected this service

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, CQC has continued to regulate and respond to risk. However, taking into account the circumstances arising as a result of the pandemic, and in order to reduce risk, we have conducted our inspections differently.

This inspection was carried out in line with all data protection and information governance requirements.

This included:

• Conducting interviews using video conferencing.
• Requesting evidence from the provider to be submitted electronically.
• A site visit which included a review of patients’ notes and adherence to infection control standards.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we ask the following five questions:

• Is it safe?
• Is it effective?
• Is it caring?
• Is it responsive to people’s needs?
• Is it well-led?

Updated 11 May 2023

This service is rated as Good overall (The service was rated as requires improvement at our comprehensive inspection in June 2022).

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? – Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at PrivateGP.com Ltd on 22 March 2023.

The service had been inspected in October 2021 and was placed into special measures and issued with warning notices. We returned to the practice in December 2021 and found that the service was compliant with the warning notices. That inspection was not rated.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) undertook a further comprehensive inspection of the service in June 2022, and the service was rated as inadequate in the key question of safe and requires improvement for providing effective and well-led services. It was rated as good for caring and responsive services. The overall rating was requires improvement but the service remained in special measures due to the inadequate rating in the safe key question. Two warning notices and a requirement notice were issued. We returned to the service in October 2022 to review compliance with the two warning notices and we found that the service was compliant with these.

We placed conditions on the provider’s CQC registration following the inspection in October 2022 to ensure that standards of record keeping were improved. We asked the provider to make improvements regarding the breaches in regulations, and to comply with the conditions that were imposed. We checked adherence to record keeping standards as part of this comprehensive inspection in March 2023 and found that significant improvements had been made.

All previous inspection reports can be found on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

This service is registered with CQC under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 in respect of some, but not all, of the services it provides. There are some general exemptions from regulation by CQC which relate to particular types of service and these are set out in Schedule 2 of The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. Therefore, at PrivateGP.com Ltd, we were only able to inspect the services which fall under the scope of CQC registration and the regulated activities.

The lead GP, who is also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Medical Director, is the 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.

Our key findings were:

• We found that there had been significant improvements to ensure compliance with our regulations since our previous inspections. The service had undergone major changes which had become embedded into everyday practice to ensure sustainable improvements in patient care.
• The practice mostly ensured care and treatment was provided in a safe way to patients.
• Patients received effective care and treatment that met their needs.
• We found that the service was caring and compassionate with patients and we observed a range of positive comments received from patients.
• We found that the service was responsive and flexible to patients’ needs.
• We found that the service had established effective governance and assurance processes.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Continue to be mindful of safeguarding cases and report concerns to the local authority safeguarding team.
• Ensure costs are transparent, for example, when prices increase due to consultations times being extended, or requiring a lengthier report.
• The provider should complete a second cycle audit for antibiotic prescribing which had been planned for December 2022. They should also consider a future rolling audit programme for this.

I am taking this service out of special measures. This recognises the significant improvements that have been made to the quality of care provided by this service. In addition, the conditions that were previously placed on this provider’s registration with the CQC have now been removed.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

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