Hednesford Valley Health Centre

Updated 8 November 2022

Hednesford Valley Health Centre is located at:

41 Station Road

Hednesford

Cannock

WS12 4DH

The provider is registered with CQC to deliver the Regulated Activities; diagnostic and screening procedures, maternity and midwifery services and treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

The practice is situated within the Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Integrated Care Board (ICB) and delivers General Medical Services (GMS) This is part of a contract held with NHS England. The practice is part of a wider network of GP practices known as Cannock North Primary Care Network (PCN) consisting of seven local practices working at scale providing services to a population of just over 42,000 patients.

Information published by Public Health England shows that deprivation within the practice population group is in the sixth decile (6 of 10). The lower the decile, the more deprived the practice population is relative to others.

According to the latest available data, the ethnic make-up of the practice area is 97.8% White, 0.9% Asian, 0.9% Mixed and 0.3% Black.

There is a team of three GP partners, two practice nurses, a practice manager, management assistant, reception manager and a team of four reception/administration staff. One receptionist provides health care assistant duties one morning a week.

The practice is open between 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday. Extended hours appointments are available on a Tuesday and a Friday evening until 7.15pm. The practice offers a range of appointment types including book on the day, telephone consultations and advance appointments.

Patients are also able to access additional extended hours GP appointments through the Ascent Primary Care Partnership based at Cannock Hospital. These appointments can be booked in advance by directly calling the practice during usual opening hours and are available evenings and on a Saturday between 9am and 1pm.

Further information is available on the practice website at www.drmanickam-hednesford-valley.nhs.uk

Updated 8 November 2022

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Hednesford Valley Health Centre on 12 October 2022. Overall, the practice is rated as good.

Safe - good

Effective - good

Caring - good

Responsive - good

Well-led - good

Following our previous inspection on 20 May 2016, the practice was rated good overall and for all key questions.

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

Why we carried out this inspection

We undertook this inspection as part of a random selection of services rated Good and Outstanding to test the reliability of our new monitoring approach. We assessed all five key questions based on the data and intelligence we held about the practice.

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 short site visit.
• Staff feedback 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 care and treatment that met their needs.
• The practice had an effective system in place for managing significant events to improve the quality of patient care.
• There were systems in place to monitor patients prescribed high-risk medicines and monitoring of patients with long-term conditions. However, these were not always effective.
• The practice had reviewed its skillset to ensure a more resilient workforce and recruited additional clinicians to meet their increased patient list and improve access to care and treatment.
• Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care.
• A new phone system had been installed to improve patient access to care and treatment.
• The practice had a well-established staff team. Staff felt valued, well supported and proud to work at the practice.
• The way the practice was led and managed promoted the delivery of high-quality, person-centre care.

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

• Improve medicines reviews to ensure they are effective, consistent and appropriately coded.
• Review and improve systems to ensure the effective monitoring of patients prescribed high-risk medicines and patients with long-term conditions.
• Develop a programme of targeted quality improvement.
• Continue to improve cervical cancer screening uptake and childhood immunisations for those aged five years.

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