Archived: Sutton Out-of-Hours GP Service by SELDOC-Urgent Care Centre - St Heliers Hospital

Updated 9 July 2018

South East London Doctors On Call (SELDOC, the provider) is commissioned to provide a range of GP out of hours services in South London. In South West London, Sutton Out-of-Hours GP Service by SELDOC-Urgent Care Centre - St Heliers Hospital is one of seven hubs at which patients may attend. There is a single hub that has administrative oversight for the area. Governance arrangements are co-ordinated locally by service managers and senior clinicians for each of the seven service locations, including the service provided from Sutton Out-of-Hours GP Service by SELDOC-Urgent Care Centre - St Heliers Hospital. The provider provides centralised governance for its services which are co-ordinated locally by service managers and senior clinicians.

The service is led by a service manager (who is based at SELDOC’s headquarters), and there is a lead GP on site who has oversight of the out of hours service. The service has a limited number of staff working full time at the service. The majority of GPs working at the service were either bank staff (those who are retained on a list of employed staff by the provider and who work across all of their sites) or agency. The site had permanently employed reception staff. The drivers of the cars used by doctors who visit patients were subcontracted through a separate agency.

The practice is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) for the following regulated activities: treatment of disease, disorder or injury, and transport services, triage and medical advice provided remotely.

The urgent care service is open 24 hours a day at weekends and from 6:30pm until 8am during the week. Patients can attend the service without referral, but most patients are referred to the service by 111 services.

Updated 9 July 2018

This service is rated as Good overall. The service was previously inspected by the CQC on 9 February 2017. At that inspection the rating for the service was requires improvement overall. This rating also applied to safe and well led. Effective, caring and responsive were rated as good.

The report stated where the service must make improvements:

• Ensure that all staff are aware of safeguarding policies, are aware of how to make a referral and have undertaken relevant training.
• Improve medicines management processes and audit the use of medicines.

The areas where the provider should make improvement are:

• Review serious untoward event processes to ensure that no possible incidents have been missed.

The key questions 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 a focused inspection of the Sutton Out-of-Hours GP Service by SELDOC-Urgent Care Centre - St Heliers Hospital on 21 May (a visit of the hub centre) and 22 May 2018 (a visit of the main site). The focussed inspection was to check if areas within the safe and well led domains which were in breach of CQC regulations were now resolved

At this inspection we found:

• Cars used by the service had Oxygen and an Automatic External Defibrillator available for use.
• The service utilised prescriptions where GPs provided medicines to patients directly in line with guidance.
• The service had implemented new systems for how medicines were supplied to the site. Stocks were monitored and relevant medicines were available.
• Medicines audits had been completed and the service showed improved antibiotic prescribing following audits.
• Staff were aware of safeguarding referrals and significant events and both had been raised in the past year.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP

Chief Inspector of General Practice