The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has welcomed better care being provided at a Tottenham GP surgery, after it improved its rating from inadequate to good.
Dr Jerome Kaine Ikwueke, also known as Grove Road Surgery, was inspected because it had been rated inadequate, placed in special measures and served a warning notice following an inspection last year.
Another inspection, undertaken in March this year, found the practice had addressed the concerns raised in the warning notice. However, no new ratings were issued following that inspection.
The latest inspection, undertaken in September, found significant improvement had been made. This led to the practice being rated good and exiting special measures because it was providing care that meet standards people have a right to expect.
In addition to rating the service good overall following the latest inspection, CQC rated it good for being safe, effective, caring, responsive to people’s needs and well-led.
Jane Ray, CQC deputy director for London, said:
“I welcome the significant improvement this surgery has made and congratulate those who have made this progress happen.
“Its leaders had addressed the issues we previously highlighted as undermining the care offered to people, and we found it now providing a much safer service for its patients.
“Helping services improve to provide high-quality, safe care and treatment to people is at the heart of what CQC does, so I am pleased the surgery has responded so robustly and that we have helped it turnaround provision.
“We continue to monitor the service, and it now needs to ensure these improvements are embedded and sustained.”
The inspection found:
- Leaders had robustly responded to the concerns CQC previously raised.
- Monitoring systems for patients on high-risk now kept people safe.
- There were now adequate systems to manage emergency situations.
- When things went wrong, there were now systems in place to review, investigate and learn.
- There were now appropriate systems to act on safety alerts.
- CQC remote clinical searches confirmed that the practice’s management of long-term conditions now reflected current evidence-based guidance, standards and best practice.
- Complaints were now handled appropriately.
- Clinical audits were carried out and all relevant staff were involved.
- Patient feedback was generally above local and national averages regarding phone and appointments access. Patients also fed back that they could access the right care at the right time.
- Governance arrangements now supported the delivery of high-quality and patient centred care – for example regarding staff induction arrangements, significant incident reporting, safety alerts and complaints management. Systems were also in place to ensure these governance improvements were sustained.