St Neots Health Centre

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at St Neots Health Centre on 12 December 2022. Overall, the practice is rated as requires improvement. We rated the key questions as follows;

Safe – Requires improvement

Effective - Requires improvement

Caring - Good

Responsive - Requires improvement

Well-led - Requires improvement

When this service registered with CQC, it inherited the regulatory history and ratings of its predecessor. This is the first inspection of St Neots Health Centre under the registered provider One Medical Group who became the provider from December 2021. Following our previous inspection under the predecessor, the practice was rated requires improvement overall.

The full reports for previous inspections can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for St Neots Health Centre on our website at www.cqc.org.uk

Why we carried out this inspection

We carried out this inspection to follow up concerns from the previous inspection and in line with our inspection priorities. This was a first comprehensive inspection under a new provider. St Neots Health Centre is one of 16 primary care locations under the provider One Medical Group. The provider registered this location with the Care Quality Commission in December 2021.

How we carried out the inspection

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site.

This included:

• Conducting staff interviews using video conferencing.
• Completing clinical searches on the practice’s patient records system (this was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements).
• Reviewing patient records to identify issues and clarify actions taken by the provider.
• Requesting evidence from the provider.
• A site visit.
• Staff questionnaires.

Our findings

We based our judgement of the quality of care at this service on a combination of:

• what we found when we inspected
• information from our ongoing monitoring of data about services and
• information from the provider, patients, the public and other organisations.

We found that:

• The practice leaders recognised that the challenges of providing sufficient staff levels sometimes affected the effective care and treatment to all patients and had recently recruited key members of staff.
• The practice did not have sufficient systems and processes in place to ensure good governance to protect all patients and staff from the risk of harm.
• The systems and process in place did not always ensure all medicines were prescribed to all patients safely.
• The practice had an action plan to address the backlog of appropriate reviews for patients with a long-term condition.
• Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care.
• Patient feedback reflected difficulty in accessing the practice to make appointments. Patients reported long waits on the telephone to get through to the practice.

We found breaches of regulations. The provider must:

• Establish effective systems and processes to ensure good governance in accordance with the fundamental standards of care.

In addition, the provider should:

• Continue to encourage patients to attend for the national cervical screening programme to increase uptake and for NHS health checks.
• Continue to identify and offer support to carers within the practice.
• Continue to gain and monitor patient feedback to drive improvements for access to the practice.
• Strengthen the system for investigating, recording and learning from significant events and complaints.

Details of our findings and the evidence supporting our ratings are set out in the evidence tables.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Hospitals and Interim Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services