Dr C J Studds and Partners Also known as Meadowside Medical Centre

Updated 21 February 2024

Dr C J Studds and Partners (Meadowside Medical Centre) is located Congleton at:

Mountbatten Way

Congleton

Cheshire

CW12 1DY

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

The practice is situated within the Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care System (ICS) and delivers Personal Medical Services (PMS) to a patient population of about 8580. This is part of a contract held with NHS England.

The practice is part of a wider Primary Care Network made up of local GP practices who provide shared services to their patients.

Information published by Office for Health Improvement and Disparities shows that deprivation within the practice population group is in the eighth decile (8 of 10). The lower the decile, the more deprived the practice population is relative to others.

According to the latest available data, the ethnic make-up of the practice area is 96.8% White, 1.3% Asian, 1.2% Mixed 0.3% Black and 0.3% Other.

There is a team of 7 GPs (including 3 GP partners) and regular locum GPs. The practice has a nursing team who provide nurse led clinics. Clinicians are supported at the practice by a team of reception/administration staff led by a practice manager.

The practice is open between 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday with extended hours 7.30am to 8pm on Tuesdays. The practice offers a range of appointment types including book on the day, telephone consultations and advance appointments.

Extended access is provided locally by the Primary Care Network, where late evening and weekend appointments are available. Patients can access the out of hours services by calling 111.

Updated 21 February 2024

We carried out an announced assessment of Dr C J Studds and Partners (also known as Meadowside Medical Centre) on 18 January 2024 without a site visit. The assessment focused on the responsive key question.

Following our previous inspection on 4 February 2020 the practice was rated good overall and for all key questions. The full reports for previous inspections can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Dr C J Studds and Partners on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

The practice continues to be rated as good overall as this was the rating given at the last comprehensive inspection. However, we have now rated the responsive key question as requires improvement because of the findings of this focused assessment.

Safe - good

Effective - good

Caring - good

Responsive – requires improvement

Well-led - good

Why we carried out this inspection

We carried out this assessment as part of our work to understand how practices are working to try to meet demand for access and to better understand the experiences of people who use services and providers.

We recognise the work that GP practices have been engaged in to continue to provide safe, quality care to the people they serve. We know colleagues are doing this while demand for general practice remains exceptionally high, with more appointments being provided than ever. In this challenging context, access to general practice remains a concern for people. Our strategy makes a commitment to deliver regulation driven by people’s needs and experiences of care. These assessments of the responsive key question include looking at what practices are doing innovatively to improve patient access to primary care and sharing this information to drive improvement.

How we carried out the assessment

This assessment was carried out remotely.

This included:

• Conducting staff interviews using video conferencing.

• Requesting evidence from the provider.

• Reviewing patient feedback from a range of sources

• Reviewing data we hold about the service

• Seeking information/feedback from relevant stakeholders

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:

• During the assessment process, the provider highlighted the efforts they are making or are planning to make to improve the responsiveness of the service for their patient population. The effect of these efforts are not yet reflected in patient feedback. Patient feedback indicated that they could not always access care and treatment in a timely way. Patients were dissatisfied with the arrangement for getting through to the practice by phone and their experience of obtaining an appointment.
• Not all information was included in responses to patient complaints.

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

• Continue to identify ways of improving the appointment system and access to the service by phone.
• Take action to provide patients with all information with regards options for raising concerns about the service.

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 Health Care