England’s Chief Inspector of General Practice has placed a GP practice on the Isle of Sheppey into special measures following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission.
The Care Quality Commission has found the quality of care at Dr Srinivasan Subash Chandran in Sheerness, Kent, to be Inadequate. A full report of the inspection has been published today.
Dr Srinivasan Subash Chandran provides primary medical services to approximately 4,200 patients on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent.
Under CQC’s new programme of inspections, all of England’s GP practices are being given a rating according to whether they are safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led.
Inspectors rated the practice good for caring, requiring improvement for effectiveness and being responsive to people’s needs and inadequate for being safe and well led.
The report highlights a number of areas where improvements must be made including:
- Ensuring that Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks or appropriate risk assessments are completed for all staff who act as chaperones.
- Ensuring that medicine audits are regularly conducted, in order to review patients who may be at risk of taking medicines that are highlighted in medicine safety alerts
- Ensuring that safe care and treatment is provided to patients by having a system in place for significant events, incidents and concerns
Ruth Rankine, Deputy Chief Inspector of General Practice for the South, said:
“It is important that the people who are registered with Dr Srinivasan Subash Chandran can rely on getting the high quality care which everyone is entitled to receive from their GP.
"Although the patients we met told us they were treated with compassion and dignity, we found that the treatment they received was not always delivered in line with best practice.
“We have found significant areas of concern, which is why we are placing the practice into special measures - so opening the way to support from NHS England among others.
“We will continue to monitor this practice and we will inspect again in six months to check whether improvements have been made. I am hopeful that the practice will do what is required for the sake of its patients.”
Deborah Tomalin, Head of Commissioning at NHS England South (South East) said:
“General practice is the bedrock of the NHS and it’s pleasing that the majority of practices inspected are rated good, with some rated outstanding. These inspections are about ensuring that every patient, anywhere across the country, receives consistently high quality services by identifying issues so improvements can be made. For those practices rated as ‘inadequate’ there is a need for extra support to be put in place and we work to help turn the affected practices around with the local Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).
“Dr Chandran’s Practice has confirmed its commitment to making the necessary improvements set out by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). NHS England is working alongside Swale CCG to support the practice to take the action needed to make sure it has the right processes in place to support the delivery of safe, high quality care to all its patients.”
Ends
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Find out more
Read our reports about Dr Srinivasan Subash Chandran.