Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Earls Court Medical Centre on 5 May 2015. The practice had previously been inspected during our pilot phase in May 2014. We must conduct inspections at those practices that were inspected during our pilot phase in order to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Specifically, we found the practice to be good for providing safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led services. It was also good for providing services for older people, people with long term conditions, families, children and young people, working age people (including those recently retired and students), people living in vulnerable circumstances and people experiencing poor mental health (including people with dementia).

Our key findings were as follows:

Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns and report incidents, accidents and significant events.

Staff received adequate support and training to deliver effective care.

Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect. Information was provided to help patients understand the care available to them.

The practice implemented suggestions for improvements and made changes to the way it delivered services as a consequence of feedback from patients and from the Patient Participation Group (PPG).

The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.

Information about how to complain was available and easy to understand and complaints were dealt with in a timely way.

T

here were governance arrangements in place and staff understood their level of responsibility and accountability.

However there were some areas where the provider needs to make improvements.

The provider should:

Carry out minor surgery audits as recommended by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP).

Provide access to an automated external defibrillator (used to attempt to restart a person’s heart in an emergency) as recommended by the UK resuscitation council guidelines.

Formalise the practice’s vision and strategy.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

Earls Court Medical Centre provides primary medical services through a General Medical Services (GMS) contract to people in the local community.

The service is registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide the regulated activities of diagnostic and screening procedures, treatment of disease, disorder and injury, surgical procedures, family planning and maternity and midwifery services.

During our inspection we spoke with eight staff and five patients. We also received feedback through the CQC comment cards.

We found that the service had some systems in place to manage patients’ safety. Staff received appropriate training and professional development to deliver safe and effective care. The service was responsive to patients’ needs and used feedback and complaints to improve. However, there were some areas where improvements needed to be made. We found that opportunitiesexisted toimprove outcomes for patients based on the practices' Quality Outcomes and Framework (QOF) performance. The service could not provide evidence of completed audit cycles and therefore it was not clear how patient care had improved as a result. We found that learning from serious incidents had taken place but there was no evidence that learning had been shared with all staff and there were no contingency plans in place to ensure continuity of care for patients in the event of a major disruption to the service.