England’s Chief Inspector of General Practice has told a Manchester GP practice that it must improve. The Medlock Vale Medical Centrehas been placed in special measures following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission in November 2017.
Inspectors rated the practice as inadequate for safety and well-led. In addition it was rated requires improvement for caring, effectiveness and responsiveness. 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:
The practice did not have clear systems to mitigate risk in relation to the safe care and treatment of patients. Inspectors found that when incidents did happen, although some were investigated and discussed with lessons learnt and shared, CQC found not all incidents were documented and formally reviewed.
Patients found appointments overall were available; however they reported challenges accessing appointments as it was not easy to access the practice by telephone.
Patients said they could make an appointment with a named GP although some said they may have to wait several days for this appointment. Urgent appointment were available the same day.
Beverley Cole, Head of General Practice for the North, said:
“This practice was last inspected in November 2016 when they were rated as good. It’s disappointing to see that in a period of 12-months they have deteriorated to such an extent. There were aspects of prescribing that particularly concerned me. There was no system in place for monitoring uncollected prescriptions. We found large numbers of prescriptions issued up to five months previously remained uncollected. These included prescriptions for antibiotics and controlled drugs. This could seriously impact on patient safety and wellbeing"
“Inspectors could not see that the leaders had the skills to deliver the practice strategy and address risks to it or to deliver high-quality, sustainable care. Capacity was limited due to shortage of GPs and reliance on locum GPs which impacted on the time available to the lead GP for quality improvement."
Structures, processes and systems to support good governance and management were ineffective. They were not consistently implemented or monitored and there was a lack of day to day oversight by the leaders when it came to the management of safety and risk."
“It is important that the people who are registered with Medlock Vale 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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It’s disappointing to see that in a period of 12-months they have deteriorated to such an extent
Beverley Cole, Head of General Practice for the North