England’s Chief Inspector of General Practice has again rated a Hastings GP surgery as Inadequate and recommends the surgery stay in special measures following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
A specialist team of inspectors rated the service provided by Dr Ankur Chopra as Inadequate for providing services that were safe and well-led, Requires Improvement for responsive to people’s needs while rated Good for being effective and caring.
After a second inspection, the overall rating for Dr Ankur Chopra’s practice at Roebuck House, High Street, Hastings stays as Inadequate and remains in special measures.
The practice was inspected in July 2016 by a team which included a CQC lead inspector, a GP specialist adviser, a CQC pharmacy inspector and a practice manager specialist adviser.
A full report of this inspection has been published.
While the Care Quality Commission found staff caring, treating patients with compassion and dignity, inspectors have identified a number of areas for improvement, including:
- Not all nursing staff were trained to the appropriate level of child safeguarding.
- While improvements had been made in relation to appropriate recruitment checks on staff, there were still gaps apparent in relation to recruitment records. One new member of staff had commenced in post without A Disclosure and Barring Service check although the practice had carried out an associated risk assessment.
- Improvements had been made in relation to medicines management however there continued to be some issues relating to this. For example, in relation to the adoption of patient group directions, the availability of emergency medicines, the management of medicine incidents and the use of patients own dressings within the practice.
- There were ongoing maintenance issues identified at the branch surgery and these had not been adequately addressed.
- Staff were clear about reporting incidents, near misses and concerns however there was little evidence of robust investigation processes, learning and communication with staff. Complaints were not adequately addressed and associated records of investigations and actions were not kept.
Ruth Rankine, Deputy Chief Inspector of General Practice (South) said:
"It is clear that Dr Ankur Chopra has not made enough improvements since our previous inspection, in March 2016, where we again identified serious concerns relating to the safe delivery of services and leadership of the practice.
“We are aware it takes hard work and commitment from all practice staff to deliver the improved services which will result in higher standards of care for patients. We rated caring in the service as being good because there are examples of staff interacting with patients and treating them with dignity and respect. But, there is still a tremendous amount work to do and this needs to move at a pace. If we still feel the service is inadequate at our next inspection, then we will not hesitate to use our enforcement powers to protect patients using the service even if this means removing the registration of the practice.”
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