CQC rates Salford GP Practice as Inadequate

England’s Chief Inspector of General Practice has told a Salford GP that the practice must improve following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission.  

A specialist team of inspectors rated the service provided by Dr Wayne Sefton Davis at Leicester Road Medical Centre in Salford, Manchester as Inadequate for being safe, effective, and well-led, and required improvement to be caring and responsive. The practice has been given an overall rating of Inadequate.

Under CQC’s new programme of inspections, led by Professor Steve Field, Chief Inspector of General Practice, all of England’s GP practices are being inspected and given a rating.

Dr Davis’s practice was inspected in October 2014 by an inspection team which included a GP advisor and an Expert by Experience.

A full report of this inspection has been published on the CQC website today.

At the time of the inspection Dr Davis had not been delivering clinical care to patients for approximately seven months and during this period services had been provided by a part-time GP and several locum doctors.

Although inspectors received some positive comments from patients they spoke to during the inspection, they identified a number of significant concerns.

The practice had no clear leadership structure and staff did not always feel supported by management.

Concerns were raised regarding medicines management and staff lacked training to carry out some key safety measures. Staff had not been trained in fire safety, fire drills were not completed and there was little equipment for dealing with emergency medical situations.

Although staff understood their responsibilities to raise concerns, reviews and investigations were not sufficiently thorough, and lessons learned were not communicated widely enough to support improvement.

Appropriate recruitment checks on staff had not been undertaken prior to their employment and actions identified to address poor infection control practice had not been taken.

Inspectors found that there were no systems in place to monitor the safe running of the practice and little evidence of audits having been undertaken.

The Care Quality Commission has identified six areas where the practice must make improvements, including:

• The practice must take action to prevent the risk of infection.
• The practice must take action to more effectively manage medications.
• The practice must ensure that people who use the service are protected by operating effective recruitment and selection procedures.
• Take action to ensure that persons employed are suitably supported and trained to perform their role.
• The practice must complete and submit a Statement of Purpose.
• Take action improve systems for assessing and monitoring the quality of the service provision.

CQC has been working closely with Salford clinical commissioning group and NHS England to support the practice while it addresses the issues identified by the inspection.

Sue McMillan, Deputy Chief Inspector of General Practice said:

“It is important that the people who are registered with Leicester Road Medical Centre can rely on getting the high quality care which everyone is entitled to receive from their GP. 

“Patients were positive about the care they received and said they were treated with compassion and dignity. However, people attending this practice are being exposed to potentially unsafe methods of care, for example the lack of infection control audits.

“The areas of concern, such as the failure to undertake employment checks and to routinely monitor quality, that have been identified in the report will need to be addressed and immediate action taken so that people get safe, high-quality  primary care.

“If in the coming months we don’t see sufficient improvement, we may have to consider a package of further measures to ensure that this practice delivers the care and treatment to a standard that we all expect.”

Ends

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