Archived: Long Melford Surgery

Updated 21 June 2023

Long Melford Practice is located in Long Melford at:

Cordell Road

Long Melford

Sudbury

CO10 9EP

The practice has a branch surgery at:

36 Church Street

Lavenham

Sudbury

CO10 9SA

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

The practice offers services from a main and a branch surgery. There is a dispensary at the Long Melford site. Patients can access services at either surgery.

The practice area covers the village of Long Melford and extends into the outlying villages. The practice offers health care services to around 9,000 patients, from the Long Melford and branch surgery in Lavenham.

The practice is part of the Suffolk and North Essex Integrated Care Board and part of a local primary care network. The practice holds a Personal Medical Service (PMS) contract, locally agreed with NHS England.

The practice has three GP partners and three salaried GPs. The practice is a training practice and has two GP registrars (a GP registrar is a qualified doctor who is training to become a GP).

There is a nursing team of four, one healthcare professional, one healthcare assistant and a clinical support assistant.

There is a team of receptionist and administration staff, a practice manager, an assistant practice manager, and an operations director. The dispensary team includes a pharmacy technician who is the dispensary manager, and three dispensers.

Long Melford Surgery is open from 8am to 6.30pm on Monday to Friday, with appointments available from 8.30am to 11am and from 3pm to 5.30pm. Lavenham Surgery is open Monday to Friday from 8am to 1pm and from 2pm to 6.30pm, with appointments available from 8.30am to 11am and 3pm to 5.30pm. Extended hours appointments are available at the primary care network practices outside the core practice opening hours on Wednesday evenings until 8:30pm and Saturdays from 9am to 5:30pm giving patients that work greater access. During out-of-hours, GP services are provided by Care UK via the 111 service.

Information published by Public Health England shows that deprivation within the practice population group is in the third highest decile (eight of 10). The lower the decile, the more deprived the practice population is relative to others.

The data available shows, the ethnic make-up of the practice area is 0.4% Asian, 95.5% White, and 0.1% Other. The age distribution of the practice population shows a higher percentage of patients aged over 60 years and a lower percentage of patients aged 54 years and under

Updated 21 June 2023

We carried out an announced inspection at Long Melford Surgery on 18 April 2023. Overall, the practice is rated as requires improvement.

Safe - requires improvement

Effective - requires improvement

Caring - good

Responsive - requires improvement

Well-led - requires improvement

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

Why we carried out this inspection

We carried out this inspection to follow up on breaches of regulation from the previous inspection.

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 to both the main and branch sites.

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:

• The leadership had improved and systems had been developed and put in place to provide safe and effective care and treatment was delivered for patients. However, these systems needed to be embedded for assurance they would be sustained.
• The practice had developed comprehensive systems and processes to identify and mitigate risks.
• The practice performance in relation to patient feedback around access was poor and, in some domains was significantly below local and national averages. The practice had carried out their own feedback survey in January 2023 which showed an 85% positive response to the same questions asked in the GP national survey.
• The practice had suffered a number of challenges following the installation of a new clinical system in November 2021. They told us this had contributed to inconsistencies in their data. They had implemented a monitoring system to review patients records and improve the data recorded.
• The local integrated care board (ICB) had worked with the practice to develop an action plan that showed improvements had been made, however, these were still not completed. These improvements need to be embedded and monitored to ensure they would be sustained.
• Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care.

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

• Continue to encourage patients to participate in national cancer screening.
• Continue to seek patient feedback and learn from findings to improve their patients experience.
• Continue to work through the areas not completed on the action plan including the improvements made to patient records keeping and medicine reviews.
• Continue to embed the quality improvement plan and audits for assurance they will be sustained.

I am taking this service out of special measures. This recognises the improvements that have been made to the quality of care provided by this 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 Hospitals and Interim Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services