Background to this inspection
Updated
9 January 2019
Washwood Heath Centre is run by Virgin Care Vertis LLP. It provides nurse led NHS walk-in facilities for members of the public who require treatment for minor illnesses and injuries. The service was originally commissioned in 2011 and current commissioning arrangements are held with Birmingham and Solihull Clinical Commissioning Group.
Washwood Heath Centre is located within the Washwood Heath Health and Wellbeing Centre which it shares with a GP practice, community health teams and a pharmacy. The building is purpose built and managed by NHS properties. It is situated within a residential area with links to public transport. There is car parking available for patients using the Health and Wellbeing Centre.
Patients do not need to be registered or need to make an appointment to use the service. The service is open 9am to 9pm daily, including weekends and bank holidays (with the exception of Christmas Day). Patients access the service in person and wait to be seen.
Approximately 30,000 consultations take place in the walk-in centre per year. The service is located in an area with higher than the national average levels of deprivation and has an ethnically diverse population. The provider estimates that over 40% of the population do not speak English as a first language. The population is younger than both the CCG and national average.
The service has close links with the provider’s other walk-in centre, Warren Farm Urgent Care Centre located in Kingstanding, Birmingham. The two services share the same contract with the CCG and some staff including the service manager and clinical manager.
The service is currently staffed with a minimum two Advanced Nurse Practitioners with an additional member of staff at busy periods. The clinical staff are supported by a team of administrative / reception staff.
Updated
9 January 2019
This service is rated as Good overall. (Previous inspection March 2018 – Good)
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 previously carried out a comprehensive inspection at Washwood Heath Centre on 1 March 2018. The overall rating for the service was good with a requires improvement rating for the provision of effective services. The full comprehensive report for the March 2018 inspection can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Washwood Heath Centre on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
This inspection was an announced focused inspection carried out on 18 December 2018. It was undertaken to confirm that the service 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 1 March 2018. This report covers our findings in relation to those requirements and also additional improvements made since our last inspection.
Our key findings are as follows:
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We found that the provider had taken effective action to address the issues raised in our previous inspection report.
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A comprehensive clinical audit programme had been developed and was underway to support service improvement and learning.
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The implementation of additional staffing had helped improve waiting times for patients attending the service.
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The processes for checking that emergency medicines and equipment was present and in date had been improved. We found records for monitoring this were complete.
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Patient information was available in languages alternative to English for common complaints seen at the service. This included the main local language spoken in the community.
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Staff advised that complaints had been reviewed for themes or trends however, there were relatively few and no specific themes identified.
The areas where the provider should make improvements are:
Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)
Chief Inspector of General Practice