This practice is rated as Good overall.

The key questions at this inspection are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? - Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at New Bank Health Centre on 19 June 2018. The GP provider, The Robert Darbishire Practice Limited took over this practice in October 2017 and the registration of the service with the CQC was completed in December 2017.

This inspection was carried out under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. The inspection was planned to check whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

At this inspection we found:

• The provider upon taking over the practice in October 2017 identified several areas requiring immediate improvement. This included systems to ensure patients received safe, appropriate care quickly and improvements in the health and safety of the premises and equipment. The provider implemented a comprehensive plan to improve and develop the practice and service delivery.
• This inspection identified many areas where changes had been implemented and the plan was ongoing to ensure the implementation of improvements.
• The practice now had clear systems to manage patients’ care, and systems of call and recall were established and fail-safe monitoring implemented to ensure patients received the right care quickly.
• The practice had clearly defined and embedded systems to minimise risks to patient safety. A ‘Red Flag’ policy was accessible to all staff from their desktop computer whereby specific health care symptoms were triggers for staff to take immediate action.
• Staff involved and treated patients with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• There was an history of negative feedback from patients. The practice was trying to address this by providing a stable well trained staff team and plans were in place to change the telephone system to improve access.
• There was a strong focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Implement the planned upgrade to the telephone system to improve patient telephone access.
• Continue to identify and support patients who are also carers.
• Establish methods of formal patient feedback including developing a patient participation group.
• Continue to implement the strategy to improve achievement in cervical cytology.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP
Chief Inspector of General Practice

Please refer to the detailed report and the evidence tables for further information.