The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has taken action to protect people at Dashwood Medical Centre after finding concerns about the quality of care and treatment they were receiving, following an inspection in May.
This inspection was carried out to follow up on the progress of improvements it was told to make after being issued with warning notices legal requirement notices following a previous inspection in November last year which saw the practice rated as inadequate.
As this was only a focused inspection to check on the progress of their warning notices, CQC didn’t re-rate the service and it retains its ratings from the previous inspection. It remains rated as inadequate for being safe and well-led, requires improvement for being effective and responsive, as well as being good for caring.
Due to the seriousness of the concerns found at this inspection, the CQC have taken steps to prevent Dashwood Medical Centre from carrying out this regulated activity, which will prevent them from operating. This process is still on-going and the provider has the right to appeal.
NHS Kent and Medway ICB has worked closely with the provider to ensure people registered at the surgery are able to access care there.
Neil Cox, CQC deputy director of operations in the south, said:
“When we inspected Dashwood Medical Centre we were concerned for people using the service that leaders hadn’t been able to make the required improvements since our previous inspection. This is despite us telling them in detail in the last report, as well as in warning notices where they needed to improve.
“The practice didn’t have clear systems and processes in place in order to provide effective treatment to people and keep them safe. At our last inspection we found a large backlog of laboratory results and outstanding documents in relation to people’s test results. Whilst there had been some improvements there were still issues identified with the management of test results due to IT issues.
“We found that people weren’t being monitored in line with best practice guidelines. For example, we saw monitoring interventions being missed to check it was still safe for people to receive certain medicines.
“It was also concerning staff weren’t still up to date with all of their essential training, including safeguarding training, and do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation (DNACPR) forms weren’t being completed in line with legislation.
“It’s for these reasons we have taken steps to prevent Dashwood Medical Centre from carrying out this regulated activity, which will prevent them from operating. This process is still on-going and the provider has the right to appeal. NHS Kent and Medway ICB has worked closely with the provider to ensure people registered at the surgery are able to access care there.”
Inspectors found:
- Improvements to the practice’s systems, practices and processes were insufficient and didn’t always keep people safe and safeguarded from abuse
- The practice had made improvements to systems and processes to help maintain appropriate standards of cleanliness and hygiene. However, some infection prevention and control issues were ongoing and hadn’t been managed in a timely manner
- Staff didn’t always have access to the information they needed to deliver safe care and treatment
- Complaints were investigated and responded to in a timely manner. However, we could not find evidence to show learning from complaints was being shared with staff
- Improvements had been made to the management of backlogs of laboratory results and outstanding documents that required action. However, management of tasks, and test requests was insufficient.