England’s Chief Inspector of General Practice has told a Bolton GP practice that it must improve. The Shanti Medical Centre has been placed in special measures following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission in November 2017.
Inspectors rated the practice as inadequate for safety, effectiveness, responsiveness and well led and requires improvement for caring. Overall the practice has been rated as inadequate.
A full report of the inspection can be found on our website.
The report highlights a number of areas of concern including:
Not all staff had the right qualifications, skills, knowledge and experience to do their job effectively and the learning needs of staff were not fully supported.
The practice did not have clear systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen again. Inspectors found that when something went wrong, people were not always told. Safety was not a sufficient priority and there was limited monitoring of safety issues with high levels of serious or significant incidents.
Alison Holbourn, Deputy Chief Inspector of General Practice for the North, said:
“I was concerned to see that the some sections of the patient community were not getting the care and cover that they should. The needs of the local population were not fully identified or taken into account when planning services, for example in the case of cervical screening. Some people were not able to access services for assessment, diagnosis or treatment when they needed to and action to address this was not done in a timely or effective way."
“The service was not well-led. Leaders were not working together for the benefit of the service and patients in that they did not consistently have the knowledge, capacity or desire to deliver an effective service and were out of touch with what was happening on a day to day basis. This is an area of particular concern."
”I was concerned also to learn that there was no innovation or service development and improvement was not a priority among staff and leaders. The practice, rather than advancing was going in a backward direction. It is important that the practice ensure that there are sufficient numbers of suitably qualified, competent, skilled and experienced persons are deployed to meet the fundamental standards of care and treatment."
“It is important that the people who are registered with Shanti Medical Centre can rely on getting high quality care. The service has been placed in special measures and will be kept under review and if needed could be escalated to urgent enforcement action, and if there is not enough improvement we will move to close the service.”
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The service was not well-led. Leaders were not working together for the benefit of the service
Alison Holbourn, Deputy Chief Inspector of General Practice in the North