England’s Chief Inspector of General Practice has rated Blackburn GP Practice, The Family Practice, 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.
The Family Practice was rated as Inadequate for safe, effective and well-led domains, and Requires Improvement for caring and responsive domains. The services provided by the practice have been rated as Inadequate overall.
Alison Holbourn, Deputy Chief Inspector of General Practice at CQC said:
“We found that people registered with The Family Practice aren’t getting the high quality care which everyone should expect to receive from their GP practice.
“We found patients were at risk of harm because systems and processes were not good enough to keep them safe. For example appropriate recruitment checks were not always undertaken before staff started working at the practice.
“We were also concerned that patient outcomes were hard to identify as little or no reference was made to audits or quality improvement and there was no evidence that the practice was 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; placing the practice in to special measures ensures that action will be taken to improve the quality of care for patients.”
A full report of this inspection has been published.
Some of the areas where CQC have told the practice they must improve are:
- Ensure recruitment arrangements include all necessary employment checks for all staff.
- Ensure a quality improvement programme is implemented which may include clinical audits to ensure improvements to care and treatment have been achieved.
- Ensure staff training is undertaken and appropriately managed to ensure all staff have the skills and qualifications to carry out their roles.
- Ensure infection prevention and control is appropriately monitored.
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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For further information please contact CQC Regional Communications Officer Kerri James on 07464 92 9966 or kerri.james@cqc.org.uk.
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