Lozells Medical Practice

Background to this inspection

Updated 15 December 2017

Lozells Medical Practice is a long established practice located in the Lozells area of Birmingham in the West Midlands. There are approximately 4,180 patients of various ages registered and cared for at the practice. Services to patients are provided under a General Medical Services (GMS) contract with NHS England. The practice has expanded its contracted obligations to provide enhanced services to patients. An enhanced service is above the contractual requirement of the practice and is commissioned to improve the range of services available to patients.

The management team consists of the principle GP partner (male), the practice manager and an IT manager. The clinical team also includes a long term-sessional locum GPs (female) as well as two female practice nurses. The practice is supported by a team of four staff who cover reception, secretarial and administration roles.

The practice is now open for appointments between 9:30am to 1pm and from 4:30pm to 6:30pm Monday to Friday. The practice offers extended hours on Monday evenings from 6:30pm to 8pm.

There are in-hours primary care cover arrangements with a local primary care provider (Primecare) to cover appointment lines between 8am and 9:30am and from 1pm to 4:30pm, Monday to Friday. If a patient requires care from a practice clinician during this time then the call is managed by Primecare and passed to the GP on call.

The practice is also part of a local GP federation called My Healthcare; this enables patients to access services at a neighbouring practice located over the road from Lozells Medical Practice. Services can be accessed up to 12 hours a day Monday to Friday and between 10am to 2pm on Saturdays.

Overall inspection

Good

Updated 15 December 2017

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We previously inspected Lozells Medical Practice on 2 August 2016. As a result of our inspection visit the practice was rated as requires improvement overall, with requires improvement ratings for providing safe, responsive and well-led services. The practice was rated as good for providing effective and caring services. This was because we identified a regulatory breach under Regulation 12: Safe care and treatment. As a result, we identified areas where the provider must make improvement with regards to monitoring of prescribing and effectively managing risk in relation to emergency medicines. In addition, we identified some areas where the provider should make improvements such as improving patient satisfaction in relation to appointment access.

We carried out a focussed follow up inspection of Lozells Medical Practice on 16 November 2017. This inspection was conducted to see if improvements had been made following the previous inspection in 2016. This report only covers our findings in relation to those requirements. You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the 'all reports' link for Lozells Medical Practice on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Our key findings across all the areas we inspected were as follows:

During our inspection we noted improved governance which complimented safe systems and processes, as well as effective risk management. We observed improved processes for managing safety alerts and with regards to the management of medicines.

Prescribing was well monitored and there was an effective recall system in place for patients needing medicines reviews and we noted that this had been strengthened since our previous inspection in August 2016.

The practices emergency medicines had been updated since our previous inspection in August 2016. The emergency medicines stock consisted of medicines recommended for general practice and the services they delivered.

Members of the management team explained that access had been a key focus for improvement at the practice overall. To improve access the practice changed their opening times and in addition, was able to offer patient’s access to services up to 12 hours a day Monday to Saturday, through the My Healthcare HUB model as the practice was part of this federation.

The practice recognised that patients were experiencing difficulties in accessing appointment by telephone and decided to change telephone provider for a better organised telephony system. A second telephone line had also been installed so that housebound patients and patients with complex needs could access the service through two direct access lines.

We saw that the practices had carried out a satisfaction survey which demonstrated improvements to access over time. All survey respondents rated the practices opening hours as good, very good or excellent. In addition all respondents indicated that they were happy with telephone access. Results from the NHS Friends and Family Test (FFT) also highlighted improved satisfaction rates over time.

The practice had focussed on identifying more carers in order to offer them support, the carers register had increased from 0.4% to 2% since our last inspection. The practice offered health reviews and flu vaccinations for anyone who was a carer. The practice displayed a range of supportive information for carers and there was information in place for carers to take away, we saw that carers were signposted to carer support services.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)

Chief Inspector of General Practice