The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has found significant improvements at Matching Green Surgery, and upgraded their overall rating from inadequate to good. The surgery has also been removed from special measures, following an inspection in June.
This inspection was carried out to follow up improvements CQC told leaders to make following their previous inspection. At that time, inspectors found poor management of systems important to people’s safety. This inspection found significant improvements addressing these concerns.
Matching Green Surgery in Basildon, Essex, serves a population of around 3,617 people.
As well as the service’s overall rating improving, from inadequate to good, so have the ratings for how safe and well-led they are. The service’s effectiveness rating has improved from requires improvement to good. It has again been rated good for being responsive. This inspection did not assess how caring the service was, so this remains rated as good from its previous inspection.
Hazel Roberts, CQC deputy director of operations in the east of England, said:
“When we inspected Matching Green Surgery, we were pleased to now find an open and positive culture of safety where staff took all concerns seriously to keep people safe. We saw that significant improvements had been made in response to concerns we raised at our last inspection, including the management of people’s test results and high-risk medicines.
“Leaders supported continual improvements to the service based on feedback from people using it, feedback from staff, and reviews of how effectively care was working.
“People also gave positive feedback in the National GP Patient Survey and NHS Friends and Family Test, saying staff treated them with compassion and involved them in decisions about their care. Staff adapted care to meet people’s needs, such as offering longer appointment times to people with a mental health condition or learning disability.
“We did identify some areas that still need improvements, such as care for people with long term conditions like asthma, ensuring all staff had adequate safeguarding training, and acting on safety alerts in line with national guidance. We shared these findings with leaders at the practice, who took immediate action.
“Everyone at Matching Green Surgery should be really proud of the improvements they’ve made. We’ve shared our findings with them so that they can continue to build on the improvements we saw, and we will continue to monitor the service to make sure these changes are sustained long term.”
Inspectors also found:
- The service identified people who might be digitally excluded, to make sure they got the same information as other people using the service. For example, information shared by text was also shared by telephone if needed
- When things went wrong, leaders investigated to prevent repeated mistakes and keep people safe in future. For example, leaders had promptly reported and acted on an incident in which vaccines were exposed to temperatures or light outside their recommended range, and later audited the service’s management of this in response
- Since CQC’s last inspection, the service had improved their monitoring of controlled drugs, which are medicines that can cause harm if they are not used properly and can lead to dependence and misuse.
However:
- The service did not have an active Patient Participation Group (PPG) in place to better represent the views of people using the service, which was also a concern at CQC’s previous inspection. Leaders were working with other practices in their primary care network to encourage people to engage with participating in the group.