England’s Chief Inspector of General Practice has rated Dr Swaminathan Ravi, Barnsley as Inadequate and placed the practice into special measures following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission.
Under CQC’s programme of inspections, all of England’s GP practices are given a rating in five key areas, are they; safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led. Dr Swaminathan Ravi was rated as Requires Improvement for caring, and responsive, and Inadequate for safe, effective and well-led.
The services provided by the practice have been rated as Inadequate overall.
Dr Janet Williamson, Deputy Chief Inspector of General Practice at CQC said:
“It’s unacceptable that people registered with Dr Swaminathan Ravi aren’t getting the high quality care which everyone is entitled to receive from their GP.
“Although we found most of the issues we raised at the previous inspection had been rectified, we found fresh concerns and breaches of regulations at this most recent inspection.
“We were concerned that despite some improvements, the lack of robust policies and procedures relating to staff, and the running of the practice put people at risk. For example the safeguarding policy had been updated, but was still not detailed enough to protect people using this service.
“We were also concerned that the effectiveness of that practice’s patient outcomes weren’t monitored, and we saw no evidence that they were comparing its performance to others, either locally, or nationally.
“I do not believe that the practice is likely to resolve its challenges without external support. This is why it will remain in special measures.”
A full report of this inspection has been published on the CQC website at: www.cqc.org.uk/location/1-514323427.
Some of the areas where CQC have told Dr Swaminathan Ravi they must improve are:
- Introduce robust processes for reporting, recording, acting on and monitoring significant events, incidents and near misses.
- Ensure paper and electronic records are held securely meeting the requirements of the Data Protection Act 1998.
- Ensure that all staff performing chaperone duties have received a disclosure and barring service (DBS) check. 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.
- Ensure patient outcomes are reviewed and recommendations made to contribute to a programme of continuous quality improvement.
This service was placed in special measures on 30 November 2015. Insufficient improvements have been made such that there remains a rating of inadequate for safe, effective and well led. Therefore we are taking action in line with our enforcement procedures to begin the process of preventing the provider from operating the service. This will lead to cancelling their registration or to varying the terms of their registration within six months if they do not improve.
The service will be kept under review and if needed could be escalated to urgent enforcement action. Where necessary, another inspection will be conducted within a further six months, and if there is not enough improvement we will move to close the service by adopting our proposal to remove this location or cancel the provider’s registration.
Patients registered with the practices being placed into special measures should be aware that a package of support is offered by NHS England and the Royal College of GPs to ensure that there are no immediate risks to patient safety at these GP practices whilst improvements are being made.
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