The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has reduced the rating of Parson Drove Surgery from good to inadequate, and placed it into special measures to protect people following an inspection in January.
This inspection was carried out to follow up on safety concerns people had raised to CQC.
As well the surgery’s rating dropping overall, it has also dropped from good to inadequate for safe, effective, and well-led. It has dropped from good to requires improvement for caring and responsive.
The service is now in special measures to focus its attention on making rapid and widespread improvements, and it will be kept under close review by CQC during this time to make sure people are safe. CQC have also taken further regulatory action to protect people and will report on this when legally able to do so.
Stuart Dunn, CQC deputy director of operations in the east of England, said:
“When we inspected Parson Drove Surgery, we were concerned that leaders weren’t managing numerous risks to people’s safety and weren’t making effective improvements when people raised issues.
“Leaders weren’t providing professional supervision to staff and hadn’t ensured they had completed essential training to keep people safe. For example, we saw that some people’s medicines were being prescribed by staff without the qualifications to do so.
“We were also very concerned to find the surgery wasn’t always following up with people who had described symptoms of a potentially serious illness, and wasn’t always regularly reviewing the care of people with known long-term conditions.
“Leaders weren’t aware of these issues because they weren’t monitoring the quality of people’s care and they hadn’t audited the surgery within the past 12 months. Leaders couldn’t show us that they had any system in place to analyse incidents and make improvements to people’s care in future. They also hadn’t responded effectively to people telling them in their GP patient survey results that their experience of the service was getting worse.
“We’ve told the surgery exactly where improvements need to be made and leaders have begun acting on this. We’ll be monitoring the surgery closely to make sure these are carried out promptly and people are being kept safe while that happens. We’ve also taken further regulatory action to protect people and will report on this when we’re legally able to do so.”
Inspectors also found:
- The surgery didn’t have effective safeguarding processes in place. The surgery hadn’t completed a child’s safeguarding referral after concerns were first raised. This referral was only completed after inspectors raised this
- Leaders didn’t have enough oversight of opioid prescribing at the surgery, which had one of the highest opioid prescription rates in England. This put people at risk of developing harmful dependencies. They introduced new opioid prescribing and opioid reduction policies after this inspection
- The surgery hadn’t completed risk assessments including fire safety, infection prevention, or for equipment to keep people safe. The provider has implemented these after this inspection
- People’s responses in the GP patient survey showed a decline in areas such as accessing appointments, trust, and feeling listened to over the past few years at the surgery. The surgery wasn’t seeking out people’s feedback on their own.