GP’s surgery is told to make improvements

A local GP practice has been told to make improvements after breaching several health and social care regulations.
Woodside Healthcare centreWoodside Healthcare centre
Woodside Healthcare centre

Lime Grove Surgery, in Haydock, has been rated “requires improvements” following a recent visit from health watchdog, the Care Quality Commission.

The surgery, which is based at Woodside Healthcare Centre, was assessed as “good” in the “caring, effective and responsive” categories – but concerns were raised by auditors over safety and management.

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A report has been published this month following the inspection back in September.

It highlights some concerns about operations within the practice including a lack of adrenaline in vaccination rooms, a lack of premises risk assessments and issues with safeguarding.

The report says: “A rating of requires improvement has been made as improvements were needed to the recruitment processes, systems to ensure the safety of the premises, safeguarding systems and to ensure the safe authorisation of patient group directives (PGDs).

“A record was not made of reviews of children subject to safeguarding concerns.

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“There was a system to communicate with health and social care professionals regarding concerns about vulnerable patients.

“The practice had attempted to set up face-to-face meetings with the health visiting service, but this had not taken place due to the re-organisation of the health visiting service.

“Following the inspection, we were informed that a formal meeting had been set up with the health visiting service and that further meetings would be scheduled.”

The document explained that the surgery has struggled with its recruitment, meaning that the services are split between permanent GPs and long-term locum GPs.

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It adds: “Lime Grove Surgery is operated by two partner GPs, Dr Mustafa and Dr Abhari.

“The practice formerly had two additional GP partners but the provider has been unable to recruit to these posts. The practice has two salaried GPs and three long-term locum GPs

“The partner GPs have experienced increasing difficulty ensuring that there is sufficient clinical staff to cover both the main and branch practice.

“As a result, they are currently offering a limited service to patients from the branch practice. They are in discussion with the CCG about the best ways to manage the service going forward.”

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Despite these concerns, the surgery was praised in a number of areas, including its ongoing commitment to taking patient comments on board. The CQC inspectors wrote: “Staff dealt with patients with kindness and involved them in decisions about their care.

“There was a commitment to improving the service and the practice responded to feedback from patients and staff.

“The provider was aware that the feedback for getting through to the practice by telephone was below the national average.

“They had addressed this by increasing the number of bookable on-line appointments and were having a new telephone system introduced in October 2019 which would allow call queueing and re-direct patients not requiring an appointment.

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“They planned to undertake a survey to ascertain whether the changes introduced had increased patient satisfaction in this area.”

In order to be compliant with health and social care regulations, the practice has been given a list of improvements which must be made.

Lime Grove Surgery must send CQC a report to say what action it is going to take to meet these requirements.