England’s Chief Inspector of General Practice has placed a Birmingham medical centre into special measures following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission.
The Care Quality Commission has found the quality of care at Church Lane Medical Centre in Birmingham, West Midlands, to be Inadequate following an inspection carried out in June 2015.
A full report of the inspection has been published today: www.cqc.org.uk/location/1-540603535.
Church Lane Medical Centre is based in an adapted residential property that has been extended to provide primary care services.
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 found the practice was not responsive to patients’ needs and did not have systems in place to maintain the level of service provided.
The report highlights a number of areas where improvements must be made including:
- Have effective systems in place for the management of risks to patients and others against inappropriate or unsafe care. This must include establishing robust recruitment processes, adherence to infection prevention and control procedures and completion of risks assessments in areas such as fire and legionella.
- Develop a systematic, proactive approach to identifying and targeting health promotion and preventative care services for patients who would benefit from them. The practice must use national data to assess its performance and to monitor and improve outcomes for patients.
- Ensure that staff have clearly defined roles and responsibilities with appropriate support, training and supervision to ensure they are working within their competencies.
- Establish robust systems for the management and handling of complaints and make information on raising complaints easily accessible to patients and others. Ensure robust governance arrangements are in place to assess and monitor the quality of services provided.
- Ensure audits complete their full cycle in order to demonstrate improvements made to patient outcomes.
- Seek and act on feedback from patients, staff and others to improve the quality of the service provided.
CQC will inspect the practice again to consider whether sufficient improvements have been made and support the practice while it addresses the issues identified by the inspection.
Janet Williamson, Deputy Chief Inspector of General Practice and Dentistry in CQC’s Central region said:
“It is important that the people who are registered with Church Lane Medical Centre can rely on getting the high quality care which everyone is entitled to receive from their GP.
“The practice did not have a clear vision and strategy. Staff we spoke with were not clear about their responsibilities in relation to the vision or strategy.”
“We know that Church Lane Medical Centre has acknowledged the areas where action must be taken. 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, but if we find that the service remains inadequate, we will consider taking further action.”
Ends
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Find out more
Read reports from our checks on the standards at Church Lane Medical Centre.