Karis Medical Centre

Updated 14 October 2019

Karis Medical Centre is located in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham. The provider operates from a purpose-built premise within the Birmingham and Solihull Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). The practice is currently part of a wider network of GP practices in the form of a Primary Care Network (PCN) and the ‘Myhealthcare Federation’. There are good public transport links nearby.

The practice is registered with the CQC to carry out the following regulated activities - diagnostic and screening procedures, treatment of disease, disorder or injury, surgical procedures, family planning, maternity and midwifery services and treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

The practice provides NHS services through a Primary Medical Services (PMS) contract to approximately 14000 patients.

The practice’s clinical team is led by nine GP partners and two salaried GPs (six male and five female), five nurses (all female), two health care assistants (HCAs) (female). The team also includes a health and well-being support worker (female), whose role it is to facilitate and monitor health and wellbeing in patients by signposting and referring patients to outside organisations for support such as the Karis Neighbour Scheme and ensuring that patients are tracked and handheld through this process.

The practice provides undergraduate training for medical students, and GP training with qualified doctors undergoing a period of further training in order to become GPs.

The practice manager is supported by a deputy manager and a team of administrative staff including; four administrators, two secretaries and seven receptionists.

Practice opening times are Monday to Friday 8am until 6.30pm. In addition, the practice provides up to four telephone appointments per clinician each weekday. GP and nurse extended hours appointments are available from 7.30am to 8am on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and from 6.30pm to 7.30pm on Wednesdays. The practice offers patients additional appointments at local surgeries (hubs) through the federation outside of normal surgery hours, which is between 6.30pm - 8pm each weekday and between 9am - 1pm on Saturdays and 10am - 1pm on Sundays.

Standard appointments are between 10 and 15 minutes long, with patients being encouraged to book double slots should they have more than one issue to discuss. Patients are able to register to book appointments and order prescriptions online. Home visits are available for patients whose health condition prevents them attending the surgery.

When the practice is closed, GP services are provided by the Birmingham wide out of hours service which is accessible through the practice's telephone number or by dialling 111.

The patient profile for the practice includes an above-average number of working age patients; those between the ages of 15 and 65 years and fewer than average children (0-15) and older patients (aged over-65). The practice has a higher number of patients from local homeless hostels than the local area and serves a young inner-city population- therefore has a highly transitory population.

The locality has a lower than average deprivation level. Information published by Public Health England, rates the level of deprivation within the practice population group as two, on a scale of one to ten. Level one represents the highest levels of deprivation and level ten the lowest.

Updated 14 October 2019

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Karis Medical Centre on 16 August 2019.

We carried out an inspection of this service following our annual review of the information available to us including information provided by the practice. Our review indicated that there may have been a significant change to the quality of care provided since the last inspection.

This inspection focused on the following key questions:

• Effective
• Caring
• Well-led

Because of the assurance received from our review of information we carried forward the ratings for the following key questions:

• Safe
• Responsive

We have rated this practice as Good overall.

We rated the practice as outstanding for providing Caring services because:

• The practice demonstrated continued work within the community and with organisations established by the practice to ensure that their patients have their needs met. The practice demonstrated a committed and proactive approach and culture that led to positive outcomes for patients.
• Feedback from patients, those who are close to them and stakeholders was continually positive about the way staff treated people.
• The practice had employed a dedicated member of staff (health and wellbeing support worker) to ensure that all patients, carers and loved ones had access to the services provided by community support organisations, most notably, the Karis Neighbour Scheme.
• The practice had also employed an in-house counsellor to ensure that patient’s social, emotional, physical, clinical and mental health needs were met in a dedicated, holistic and person-centred approach to care.
• The practice had extended its intake boundaries to include any local hostels as it had assessed that these patients were struggling to get access to primary care. This population however, was highly transitory and this created challenges to getting accurate data in relation to performance.

We rated the practice as Requires Improvement for providing Effective services because:

• The practice was not yet able to demonstrate that childhood immunisation or cancer screening uptake was in line with national targets. This affected both the “working age” and “Families, children and young people” population groups. The practice told us that this was partly due to the large hostel population and very transient population they serve and records we viewed confirmed this.

We rated the practice as Good for providing Well-led services because:

• There were innovative approaches to providing integrated person-centred care.
• The practice had identified areas where there were gaps in provision locally and had taken steps to address them.
• The practice leadership team demonstrated capacity and capability to drive a culture of person-centred care.

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

• Continue to ensure that systems for formal clinical supervision of nursing and healthcare staff become embedded and are operating effectively.
• Continue to review tasks on the clinical system to ensure that they are appropriate.

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

Updated 14 October 2019

Updated 14 October 2019

Updated 14 October 2019

Updated 14 October 2019

Updated 14 October 2019

Updated 14 October 2019