A GP surgery in Crowland was served with a warning order by the Care Quality Commission in October after concerns were raised around safe care and treatment and poor governance systems ‘placing people at risk of harm.’
Abbeyview Surgery, Thorney Road, received its first monitoring visit under new management by the CQC in the autumn, and inspectors found need for improvement. The practice is run by Dr Abhijit Banerjee and has 9,059 patients on its books.
“We found a lack of oversight of systems and processes, including with significant events, complaints, risk assessments and of the environment.
“Remote searches of the practice’s clinical systems also demonstrated a lack of oversight with multiple issues identified which did not assure us that patients were always safe. We found a breach in regulation under safe care and treatment and, as a result, took enforcement action asking the practice to take appropriate actions within three months to meet the areas of improvement identified,” says a report after an assessment from the beginning of August to the end of September.
“The practice demonstrated they were keen to improve from the issues we identified and had already developed an approach to ensure more consistent outcomes for patients, staff, learning and culture,” the report adds.
The CQC inspectors award a grade in five key areas along with an overall grade. Abbeyview Surgery was rated as ‘requires improvement’ in four of the five key areas and overall. It was awarded a ‘good’ grade for being ‘responsive.’
A follow-up report in November said the inspectors found that patients were at risk of appropriate monitoring and review of medicines, and poor management of blood pressure readings.
“We found all emergency medicines were not always available and where risk assessments were in place these did not give sufficient information around mitigation in place,” it added.
Staff and patients at the centre told the inspectors there was a high turnover of staff with a lack of GPs as a result, so accessibility to appointments was an issue.
“Leaders told us recruitment was a priority and they were working to address gaps within their staffing, however, we could not assess the long term impact of this.
“We received positive feedback about a recent management change which made staff hopeful for the future, but it was too early to assess the impact of this long term.”
The report said the service did not have a shared strategy, vision and culture with inconsistent staff meetings and members who did not always feel valued, along with a high workload.
“Leaders did not always have the skills, knowledge, experience and credibility to lead effectively, or they did not always do so with integrity, openness and honesty.”
