King Street Surgery

Updated 14 December 2021

King Street Surgery is located in Bedford at:

273 Bedford Road
Kempston
Bedford
MK42 8QD

The practice has the following two branch surgeries:

Cater Street Branch Surgery

1 Cater Street

Kempston

Bedford

MK42 8DR

St John's Branch Surgery

16 St John's Street

Kempston

Bedford

MK42 8EP

The provider is registered with CQC to deliver the Regulated Activities; diagnostic and screening procedures, family planning, maternity and midwifery services, surgical procedures and treatment of disease, disorder or injury. These are delivered from all sites.

The practice is situated within the Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes (BLMK) Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and delivers General Medical Services (GMS) to a patient population of about 21,685. This is part of a contract held with NHS England.

The practice is a member of a primary care network (PCN) that enables them to work with other practices in the area to deliver care.

Information published by Public Health England shows that deprivation within the practice population group is in the seventh highest decile (seven 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 80% White, 12% Asian 4% Black, 3% Mixed, and 1% Other.

The clinical team consists of nine GP partners (five female and four male), eight associate GPs (five female and three male), four GP registrars (three female and one male) and a female physician associate. The practice also employs three clinical pharmacists, seven practice nurses, two minor illness nurses and two healthcare assistants, all female. The practice has a dispensary and employs a dispenser. The team is supported by a practice manager, a patient services manager and a team of non-clinical, administrative staff.

Due to the enhanced infection prevention and control measures put in place since the pandemic and in line with the national guidance, most GP appointments were telephone consultations. If the GP needs to see a patient face-to-face then the patient is offered a choice of either the main GP location or the branch surgeries.

Out of hours services are provided by Herts Urgent Care (HUC) and can be accessed via the NHS 111 service.

Updated 14 December 2021

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at King Street Surgery on 25 November 2019.

The practice was rated as good overall; however, we found a breach of regulations which meant the practice was rated requires improvement for providing safe services.

The report for the November 2019 inspection can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for King Street Surgery on our website at www.cqc.org.uk

This inspection carried out on 8 December 2021 was a desk-based review to confirm that the practice had carried out its plan to meet the legal requirements in relation to the breach of regulations that we identified at our previous inspection in November 2019.

We based our judgement of the quality of care at this service on a combination of:

• information sent to us from the provider.
• information from our ongoing monitoring of data about services.

We rated the practice as good for providing safe services because:

• An action plan had been put in place to make improvements to the practice.
• Records of staff vaccinations were in place.
• Fire drills had been completed in line with the fire safety policy.
• Audits had taken place of the prescribing practices of non-medical prescribers.
• A stock of emergency medicines was held at the practices three sites.

Additionally, where we previously told the practice they should make improvements our key findings were as follows:

• The practice had a programme of quality improvement activity that included two-cycle audits to demonstrate the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care provided. For example, a two-cycle audit was completed to review the quality of end of life care for patients. The second cycle of the audit showed that more patients received support and had identified their preferred place of death. There was a reduction in the number of patients who had died in hospital.
• Improvements had been made to the practice telephone system that allowed for flexibility with handling incoming calls. Results from the National GP Patient Survey published in July 2021 demonstrated that patient satisfaction had improved. For example, the percentage of respondents to the GP patient survey who responded positively to how easy it was to get through to someone at their GP practice on the telephone was 59% compared to 42% at the previous inspection.

Details of our findings and the evidence supporting our ratings are set out in the evidence tables.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP

Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care