Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Stockwood Medical Centre on 16 December 2015. Overall the practice was rated as good with requires improvement for the safe domain. Following the inspection we issued a requirement notice. The notice was issued due to a breach of Regulation 12 of The Health and Social Care Act (Regulated Activity) Regulations 2014, Safe care and treatment.
The issues were:
-
There was not a robust system in place to ensure that the agreement by the clinical governance lead for Patient Group Directions had been recorded to allow nurses to administer medicines in line with legislation.
-
Staff who provided chaperone support when clinical staff were not available had not had appropriate training and checks to evidence that background security had been undertaken were not in place.
-
There were gaps in the information retained in the practice to show that appropriate checks were carried out on locum GPs employed at the practice.
A copy of the report detailing our findings can be found at www.cqc.org.uk.
We carried out this announced focused inspection at Stockwood Medical Centre on 28 November 2016 to follow up the requirement notice which was issued on 16 December 2015 and to assess if the practice had implemented the changes needed to ensure patients who used the service were safe.
Our key findings across all the areas we inspected during this inspection were as follows:
-
We saw evidence the provider had ensured there were safe systems in place for Patient Group Directions. These were adopted by the practice to allow nurses to administer medicines in line with legislation and had been signed by the clinical governance lead for the nursing staff.
-
We saw evidence the provider had ensured that an appropriate system was in place for locum personnel employed to carry on the regulated activities. The practice held the required specified information in respect of persons employed by the practice as listed in Schedule 3 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.
-
We saw evidence that the policy and procedure for providing chaperones had been reviewed and updated. We found staff carrying out the role were suitably trained and appropriate employment checks had been carried out.
Following this inspection the practice was rated overall as good across all domains.
Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)
Chief Inspector of General Practice