England’s Chief Inspector of General Practice has rated an East Sussex GP practice as Inadequate and placed it into special measures following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission.
A specialist team of inspectors rated the service provided by The Practice Hangleton Manor in Hove, East Sussex as Inadequate for being safe, effective, caring, and well-led, while requiring improvement for being responsive to people’s needs. 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.
The Practice Hangleton Manor was inspected in September 2015 by an inspection team led by a CQC Lead Inspector accompanied by a GP and a practice manager specialist advisors A full report of this inspection has been published on this website today.
Inspectors found patients were generally positive and treated with compassion and dignity. However there was evidence from other feedback sources that this was not consistently the case. It was unclear to inspectors how the practice had responded to this feedback.
CQC found a number of areas of the practice must improve including:
- Ensuring that risks to patient’s health are appropriately managed and that there is a robust system in place for patient recall, review and care planning.
- Ensuring patients who are nearing the end of life are identified and added to the palliative care register.
- Ensuring that the practice clarifies the system for sharing information with the ambulance and out of hours service for patients with complex needs, ensuring that all relevant staff are aware of the system.
Ruth Rankine, Deputy Chief Inspector of General Practice said:
“It is important that the people who are registered with The Practice Hangleton Manor can rely on getting the high quality care which everyone is entitled to receive from their GP.
“The Practice Hangleton Manor will clearly need to address these issues so that people get safe, high-quality and compassionate care. But, I do not believe that the practice is likely to resolve its challenges without external support. This is why we are placing the practice into special measures.
“After a period of six months we will inspect again to check whether sufficient improvements have been made. If we find that the service provided by this practice remains inadequate, we will consider taking further enforcement action.”
Sarah Macdonald, Director of Commissioning at NHS England South (South East) said:
“General practice is the bedrock of the NHS and 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.
The Hangleton Manor GP practice has confirmed its commitment to making the necessary improvements set out by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). NHS England is working alongside NHS Brighton and Hove (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.”
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Find out more
Read our reports on The Practice Hangleton Manor.