The Care Quality Commission (CQC), has found improvement at Regency Surgery, a GP practice run by a provider of the same name, and upgraded their overall rating from inadequate to good.
Regency Surgery on Old Steine, Brighton, serves a population of around 5,300 people.
As well as now being rated as good overall, the practice’s ratings for safety and well-led also move from inadequate to good, effective moves from requires improvement to good, and caring and responsive are again rated as good.
Neil Cox, CQC deputy director of operations in the south, said:
“Since our previous inspection of Regency Surgery in December last year, the leadership team have really taken on board our feedback and made the service much safer and more effective for the people using it.
“We saw the practice did a lot of work identifying people who had outstanding monitoring of their health issues that needed to take place and had taken action to invite people in for follow up appointments.
“They also looked outside the surgery to improve, seeking support and advice from the local medical committee, as well as the local GP safeguarding lead, to develop and embed safeguarding systems and processes to keep people safe
“It was also impressive to see they were able to offer appointments on the same day to anyone who needed them, which meant people were receiving consistent care, and it also helped to prevent unnecessary A&E attendances.
“The team at Regency Surgery should be really proud of what they’ve achieved, and we’ll continue to monitor them to make sure these changes are sustained long term.”
Inspectors found:
- Results from the annual GP Patient Survey, were above average and between April 2022 and March 2023 the A&E attendances were below the local and England average
- The practice understood people’s needs and tailored services to meet them. For example, they had set up a home visiting service of paramedics that were hosted by the practice on behalf of the primary care network. This meant they could visit people who were frail and housebound and improve their care
- The practice worked closely with other organisations like the home visiting team, occupational therapy, and an alcohol liaison nurse to meet people’s needs
- They were also looking ahead at upcoming challenges and had plans to address these. For example, they had plans to create a new clinical room by reducing the size of the practice office, to meet future demand and give themselves the opportunity to develop
- However, we have told the surgery to review systems and processes to improve uptake of child immunisation and cervical screening.