Fressingfield Medical Centre

Updated 18 August 2020

• The name of the registered provider is Fressingfield Medical Centre.
• The provider is registered to provide the regulated activities of diagnostic and screening procedures, maternity and midwifery services, surgical procedures and treatment of disease, disorder or injury.
• The practice holds a General Medical Services (GMS) contract with the local Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).
• The practice area covers Fressingfield and the surrounding villages.
• Fressingfield Medical Centre provides services to approximately 5,800 patients.
• The practice has three male GP partners, two female advanced nurse practitioner and four female practice nurses and one male practice nurse and two female phlebotomists. A practice manager leads a team of twelve reception, administration and secretarial staff who work at both sites. The practice has one lead dispenser and five senior dispensers and a dispensary receptionist.
• The main surgery is situated in Fressingfield and has a dispensary. There is a branch surgery in the village of Stradbroke which also has a dispensary. The practice offers dispensing services to those patients on the practice list who live more than one mile (1.6km) from their nearest pharmacy.
• The practice’s opening times are from 8am until 6.30pm Monday to Friday with extended hours on Monday evenings until 7.30pm. The dispensary is open between 8.30am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday. The branch site and dispensary at Stradbroke is open from 8.30am to 12.30pm and from 3.45pm to 6.15pm Mondays and Fridays. It is open from 8.30am to 12.30pm Tuesday to Thursday.
• Patients could book evening and weekend appointments with a GP through Suffolk GP+ (Suffolk GP+ is for patients who urgently need a doctor’s appointment or are not able to attend their usual GP practice on a weekday.)
• Out-of-hours GP services are provided by Suffolk GP Federation C.I.C., via the NHS111 service.
• According to Public Health England, the patient population has a significantly higher proportion of patients aged 65 years to 74 years and a higher than average number of patients aged 75 years and above, compared to the practice average across England. Male life expectancy is 83 years for men, which is above the England average of 79 years. Female life expectancy is 85 years for women, which is above the England average of 83 years. The deprivation decile is seven, with one being the most deprived and 10 being the least deprived.

Updated 18 August 2020

This practice is rated as good overall. At our last inspection published on 13 January 2020, the practice was rated as good overall, with outstanding for providing responsive service and requires improvement for providing safe services. The requires improvement rating for safe was because

• Patients who were prescribed certain high-risk medicines that required regular blood tests prior to repeat prescribing of these medicines, were not consistently monitored.
• There was not an effective governance system in place to be assured that all medicines alerts published by the Medicines and Health products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) were acted upon by the provider.

We undertook a desk based review on 11 August 2020 to check the provider had made improvements. We found improvements had been made and the practice is now rated as good for providing safe services.

At this review we found:

• The practice had improved and embedded the process for patients prescribed medicines which required a more frequent monitoring schedule to ensure safe prescribing. We reviewed the records of seven patients who were prescribed medicines which required additional monitoring before being reissued. All of these patients had appropriate blood tests undertaken and the results reviewed, before medicines had been reissued.
• Improvements had been made to the system for recording and acting on patient safety alerts. We reviewed four safety alerts and four patients who were affected by these and we found the alerts we reviewed had been acted on appropriately.
• The practice had continued work to improve their antibiotic prescribing.
• The practice had improved their uptake of cervical screening. This had increased from 77.7% in 2018 to 80.4% in 2019. Snapshot data taken on 31 March 2020 showed this had further increased to 80.9%. They had met the Public Health England target of 80%. Promotional material, opportunistic screening, flexibility of appointment time and contacting patients who did not attend were used to improve the uptake. In addition, patients who were overdue screening were contacted by a practice nurse, rather than the cervical screening administrator, so that any clinical issues could be discussed.

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 13 January 2020

Updated 13 January 2020

Updated 13 January 2020

Updated 13 January 2020

Updated 13 January 2020

Updated 13 January 2020