Sheppey Healthy Living Centre

Background to this inspection

Updated 13 December 2017

Sheppey Healthy Living Centre is located on the Isle of Sheppey, an island off the northern coast of Kent, in the Thames Estuary. It has high levels of unemployment and deprivation. Both men and women have lower levels of life expectancy than the national average.

Sheppey Healthy Living Centre is managed by Minister Medical Group, a GP partnership.

The practice provides services to approximately 2,700 patients. The practice has three long-term sessional locum GPs (one female and two male GPs). There is one practice nurse (female) who works Tuesday. There is one healthcare assistant (female) who works on Monday performing phlebotomy, health checks and new patient checks. The practice has a clinical pharmacist (female) who works Wednesday to support medication reviews and new patient checks.

The practice is situated in shared premises and there is disabled access and car parking available on site. The practice is open between 8.30am and 6pm Monday to Friday. Appointments are from 8.40am every morning till 11.50 and afternoon surgery starts at 3pm and finishes at 6pm. In addition to pre-bookable appointments that may be booked up to four weeks in advance, urgent appointments are also available for patients that need them.

Medocc, an out of hour’s health provider, manages enquiries from patients who contact the surgery between 8am to 8.30am and 6pm to 6.30pm and when the practice is closed on weekends.

The practice had a comprehensive website detailing opening times, staffing and services. It could be translated in to other languages and included screening tools and practice aide memoirs to support patients who were carers or experiencing bereavement.

The practice has a registered manager and is registered for providing treatment of disease, disorder and injury and diagnostic and screening procedures.

Overall inspection

Good

Updated 13 December 2017

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Sheppey Healthy Living Centre on 20 June 2017. The overall rating for the practice was requires improvement. The full comprehensive report from the 20 June 2017 inspection can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Sheppey Healthy Living Centre on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

This inspection was an announced focused inspection carried out on 16 November 2017 to confirm that the practice had carried out their plan to meet the legal requirements in relation to the breaches in regulations that we identified in our previous inspection on 20 June 2017. This report covers our findings in relation to those requirements and also additional improvements made since our last inspection.

Overall the practice is now rated as good.

Our key findings were as follows:

There was a system for receiving and acting on safety alerts. The practice learned from patient and medicine safety alerts.
There were systems to monitor patients on high risk medicines.
The repeat prescribing policy had been updated. Patients who did not collect their prescriptions were contacted and the clinician was informed.
The process to record significant events had been updated and provided an audit trail of actions taken and outcomes of investigations.
The process to record complaints had been strengthened to include verbal complaints. Lessons were learned from individual concerns and complaints and also from the analysis of trends.
The practice had identified 38 patients as carers (1.4% of the practice list). Written information was available to direct carers to the various avenues of support available to them.
The practice had reviewed the needs of patients to ensure services were accessible. As a result of this review the practice was planning to provide a patient leaflet in Polish.
A hearing loop was available at the practice.
The practice had a process to assess whether a home visit was clinically necessary; and the urgency of the need for medical attention. In cases where the urgency of need was so great that it would be inappropriate for the patient to wait for a GP home visit, alternative emergency care arrangements were made. Clinical and non-clinical staff were aware of their responsibilities when managing requests for home visits.
The practice had a policy for patients who did not attend appointments. Patients were sent a reminder 48 and 24 hours prior to their appointment. Patients who failed to attend appointments were contacted and the practice kept a record of why patients did not attend. This information was used for learning to improve accessibility.
The practice had a patient participation group which had two members. The practice made efforts to attract additional patients to the forum. To increase opportunities to collect patient feedback and communicate with patients the practice had set up a virtual patient group which had 61 members.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)

Chief Inspector of General Practice