The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated Eltham Palace Surgery inadequate and placed it in special measures to protect people, following an inspection in May.
This inspection was carried out to follow up concerns reported to CQC, including people’s access to the service.
As well as the overall rating dropping from good to inadequate following this inspection, the practice’s ratings for safe, effective, responsive, and well-led have also dropped from good to inadequate. Its rating for caring has dropped from good to requires improvement.
CQC has placed the practice into special measures, which means it will be kept under review and re-inspected to check on the progress of improvements.
CQC has also placed urgent conditions on the practice’s registration, which require the provider to update CQC monthly on action they’ve taken to address specific concerns found during this inspection.
Antoinette Smith, CQC deputy director of operations in London, said:
“When we inspected Eltham Palace Surgery we were disappointed to find a split in the relationship between the two GP partners had led to serious leadership issues. This resulted in leaders overlooking issues impacting people’s safety and allowing a toxic workplace culture to develop.
“We saw people had repeatedly complained about not being able to access appointments when they needed them, but leaders hadn’t taken effective action when staff raised this.
“Staff told us understaffing also made it difficult to guarantee people access to the services they needed. We found the split between partners had limited recruitment efforts and alienated staff, who told us they felt overworked, stressed, and unable to raise issues.
“This is unacceptable, staff have valuable information to keep people safe and leaders need to act to on this when they’re told something is wrong.
“In response, we’ve used our enforcement powers to demand leaders make immediate improvements to the practice. We’ll continue to monitor this service, including through further inspections, to make sure people are receiving the safe care they deserve, and won’t hesitate to take further action if needed.”
Inspectors also found:
- Leaders didn’t show they had the skills or capacity to run this practice
- There wasn’t evidence that staff had always completed training needed to care for people safely
- Difficulty getting appointments put people on high-risk medications or with long term conditions at particular risk because they couldn’t always get the routine appointments needed to monitor their safety
- People rated the practice significantly below average in the National GP Patient Survey
- It wasn’t always easy for people to complain to the practice. Inspectors needed guidance from staff to find the complaints section on the practice’s website.
However:
- There was an active patient participation group, which allowed people to provide feedback to the practice through meetings.