Bramley Village Health and Wellbeing Centre

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspectionat Bramley Village Health and Wellbeing Centre on 13 and 21 July 2023. Overall, the practice is rated as good.

Safe - good

Effective – good

Caring - good

Responsive – good

Well-led - good

Why we carried out this inspection

We carried out this inspection in line with our inspection priorities. This was the first inspection of this provider since they registered with the Care Quality Commission.

This inspection was a comprehensive inspection, therefore we inspected all of the following key questions:

Safe

Effective

Caring

Responsive

Well-led

How we carried out the inspection/review

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 short 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 provided care in a way that kept patients safe and protected them from avoidable harm.
• Patients received effective care and treatment that met their needs.
• Patients could access care and treatment in a timely way. The practice had developed a bespoke eConsultation service to give patients the option of having their clinical needs assessed and responded to within a 24 hour period.
• The way the practice was led and managed promoted the delivery of high-quality, person-centre care. We saw evidence of engagement with local groups in order to design services to meet the needs of the local population.
• The practice was committed to continually monitoring and improving the service and could demonstrate this through audit activity and changes made to the service as a result of findings.
• The practice proactively identified and supported carers. This was demonstrated by the significant increase in patients registered as a carer with the practice.

We saw areas of outstanding practice:

• The practice had been involved in The Big Bramley Apple, a community project aimed at people over the age of 60 living in Bramley with, but not limited to, ongoing illness, chronic pain and suffering the effects of loneliness, depression and isolation following the COVID-19 pandemic. Patients were invited to join the project where they could access exercise sessions (dance and chair based), swimming and social events. Free transport was provided and GPs from the practice attended the socials to provide information about services the practice offered and how they could support patients. The practice sent out 1000 invites to patients and 108 patients participated in the project. Patients noted an improvement to their physical and mental health as a result of the project.

• During the COVID-19 pandemic, the practice had operated as a National Covid Vaccination Centre in addition to providing general practice services. This service was operated 7 days a week and administered a total of 68,720 vaccines to the population (including patients registered with the practice). A review of the data collected as part of this project evidenced the practice had provided vaccinations to patients from 1,183 practices across England during this period.

• The practice carried out a carers monitoring audit which ran from April 2020 to March 2023. During this period targeted letters were sent to patients to establish their carer status. As a result of the audit the practice saw a significant increase in the carers registers as follows and at the time of our inspection 10% of the patient population were recognised as carers.

Whilst we found no breaches of regulations, the provider should:

• Improve the process for patient follow up within 1 week of receiving rescue steroids for exacerbation of asthma.
• Continue to improve childhood immunisation uptake.
• Continue to improve cervical screening uptake.