A Spalding medical practice which has been rated as “requiring improvement” says many of the issues have already been addressed.
Beechfield Medical Centre in Beechfield Gardens was inspected by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in February, just a month after practice manager Don McGeorge was appointed. It had not had a manager in place for the previous six months.
The CQC is an independent regulator of health and social care in England.
Chief inspector of general practice Prof Steve Field said: “Specifically, we found the practice inadequate for providing safe services and requiring improvement for being effective and well led.
“It also required improvement for providing services for all the population groups. It was good for providing a caring and responsive service.”
The headline findings of the report, published on May 28, were:
- Overall rating for this service: Requires improvement
- Are services safe? Inadequate
- Are services effective? Requires improvement
- Are services caring? Good
- Are services responsive to people’s needs? Good
- Are services well-led? Requires improvement
Doctors at the surgery, which has more than 15,500 patients registered, are David Corlett, Caroline Manners, Janarthanam Anandbabu, Nevila Ledwidge, Louise Beet, Naseer Khan and (temporarily until August) Lewis Thomas.
One of the good points of the reports read: “Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect. They were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.”
A public review system on the NHS website says 74.5 per cent of patients would recommend the surgery.
The practice says the rating covers a period where there was no dedicated management in place, following the sudden departure of the previous manager in July 2014.
A statement read: “The issues did not revolve around individual patient care, or the practice’s responsiveness to their needs, which was regarded as ‘good’ in virtually all areas – with the GP who attended as a part of the CQC inspection team commenting that he would be very pleased to be seen here as a patient.
“Equally, the patients that were interviewed by the inspection team on the day, and the members of the Patient Participation Group that were spoken to, were universal in their high opinion of the practice.”
It added: “Whilst many of these deficiencies had been addressed prior to the inspection, it was simply not possible to demonstrate the complete range that was asked for on the day.
“These have, however, now all been emplaced, and the practice looks forward to the CQC review of its assessment which is expected to take place within the next six months.”
Practices which have proved to be inadequate in one of the five key questions or one of the six population groups are re-inspected no longer than six months after the initial rating is confirmed.
