England’s Chief Inspector of General Practice has rated Leeds GP Practice, East Park Medical Centre, as Inadequate and placed the practice into special measures following an inspection by the CQC in August this year.
Under CQC’s programme of inspections, all of England’s GP practices are given a rating in five key areas, are they; safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led.
East Park Medical Centre were rated as Inadequate for safe, and well-led domains, and Requires Improvement for effective, caring and responsive domains. The services provided by the practice have been rated as Inadequate overall.
Alison Holbourn, Deputy Chief Inspector of General Practice at CQC said:
“We found that people registered with East Park Medical Centre aren’t getting the high quality care which everyone should expect to receive from their GP practice.
“We found patients were at risk of harm because systems and processes were not good enough to keep them safe. For example there were risks to patients as fire risks had not been considered, and nor had infection prevention and control.
“We were also concerned that there was little evidence to support whether checks of the medicines within the GPs’ bags were done. We also found no evidence of a risk assessment around what emergency medicines were carried by the GPs.
“I do not believe that the practice is likely to resolve its challenges without external support; placing the practice in to special measures ensures that action will be taken to improve the quality of care for patients.”
A full report of this inspection has been published.
Some of the areas where CQC have told the practice they must improve are:
- Review the range of medicines available in GPs bags and undertake a risk assessment to evidence the rationale where some recommended medicines have been omitted.
- Undertake a risk assessment regarding the security of the reception desk at the Halton Medical Practice location.
- Ensure patient outcomes are reviewed and recommendation made to ensure continuous improvements to care and treatment are achieved.
- Ensure all staff receive appropriate support, including appraisal, training, induction and mentorship relevant to their role.
- Ensure infection prevention and control is appropriately monitored.
- Improve engagement with the patient participation group and take action where appropriate, based on patient feedback.
The service will be kept under review and if needed could be escalated to urgent enforcement action. Where necessary, another inspection will be conducted within a further six months, and if there is not enough improvement we will move to close the service by adopting our proposal to remove this location or cancel the provider’s registration.
Patients registered with the practices being placed into special measures should be aware that a package of support is offered by NHS England and the Royal College of GPs to ensure that there are no immediate risks to patient safety at these GP practices whilst improvements are being made.
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For further information please contact CQC Regional Communications Officer Kerri James on 07464 92 9966 or kerri.james@cqc.org.uk.
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