Newtons Practice

Updated 10 October 2022

Newtons Practice is practice offering general medical services to the population of Haywards Heath in West Sussex.

Services are provided from:

The Health Centre

Heath Road

Haywards Heath

West Sussex

RH16 3BB

The provider is registered with CQC to deliver the Regulated Activities; diagnostic and screening procedures, maternity and midwifery services and treatment of disease, disorder or injury and surgical procedures.

The practice is situated within the Sussex Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and delivers General Medical Services (GMS) to a patient population of approximately 13,300. This is part of a contract held with NHS England.

Information published by UK Health Security Agency shows that deprivation within the practice population group is in the highest decile (10 of 10). The lower the decile, the more deprived the practice population is relative to others.

There is a team of four GP partners and seven salaried GPs. The practice has a team of one advanced nurse practitioner, three nurses, three paramedic practitioners and two healthcare assistants. The GPs are supported at the practice by a practice manager, an assistant practice manager and a team of reception/administration staff.

Opening hours are 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday.

Out of hours services are provided by Harmoni West Sussex via 111.

For further details about the practice please see the practice website: www.newtonspractice.co.uk

Updated 10 October 2022

We carried out an announced review at Newtons Practice on 20 June 2022. Overall, the practice is rated as Good.

Following our previous inspection on 5 July 2021, the practice was rated Good overall and requires improvement for providing safe services. Previous ratings for providing effective, responsive, caring and well-led services were carried over from the previous inspection in July 2019.

The full reports for previous inspections can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Newtons Practice on our website at www.cqc.org.uk

Why we carried out this review

This review was carried out to follow up on an outstanding breach of regulation in relation to which a warning notice was served following our last review :

There was an outstanding breach of Regulation 12 Health and Social Care Act (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 Safe care and treatment.

The provider had not ensured the proper and safe management of medicines. In particular, they had not ensured patients prescribed high risk medicines received blood tests in line with national clinical guidelines.

The provider was also asked to review and improve the recording of authorisations on patient group directions (PGDs). A Patient Group Direction (PGD) is a written instruction for the administration of medicines to groups of patients who may not be individually identified before presentation for treatment. For example, seasonal and other types of vaccination.

How we carried out the review

Throughout the pandemic CQC has continued to regulate and respond to risk. However, taking into account the circumstances arising as a result of the pandemic, and in order to reduce risk, we have conducted our reviews differently.

This review was carried out in a way which enabled us to review information remotely. We did not visit the service as part of our review. This was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements.

This included:

• Conducting staff interviews using video conferencing
• Completing clinical searches on the practice’s patient records system and discussing findings with the provider
• Reviewing patient records to identify issues and clarify actions taken by the provider
• Requesting evidence from the provider

Our findings

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

• what we found from our review
• information from our ongoing monitoring of data about services and
• information from the provider.

We have rated this practice as Good for providing safe services.

We found that:

• The practice provided care in a way that kept patients safe and protected them from avoidable harm. For example, the practice had taken steps to ensure high risk medicines were monitored in accordance with national guidelines.
• Staff were supported by up to date PGDs. We found that PGDs had been signed by all required staff prior to the sign off by the authorising manager. There was now a system to revisit this procedure when new staff signed the authorisation sheet.

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

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Hospitals and Interim Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services