Temple Cowley Medical Group

Background to this inspection

Updated 5 December 2017

Temple Cowley Medical Group provides GP services to approximately 8,000 patients in the Cowley area of Oxford. The practice serves an area with a high level (25%) of minority ethnicities and residents who were born outside of the UK. The number of patients aged between 5 to 24

years old are lower than the national average and there are a higher number of patients aged between 25 to 39 years old compared to national average. Its level of income deprivation affecting children is above the national average.

The practice has more patients on its list with long-term health conditions than the clinical commissioning group and national average. The practice has a higher than average number of patients with diagnosed mental health issues on its list. There is a large mental health hospital in the practice area, and a large number of patients with

enduring mental health conditions live in supported housing in the locality. The practice also serves three care homes for patients with poor mental health.

The practice is based in part of the ground floor of a building owned by NHS Property Services, with residential flats on the upper floors. The building is ageing and while the practice has been able to undertake some adaptions to meet patient needs, other plans to improve accessibility and provide a more pleasant patient environment have been limited by structural considerations.

The practice has core opening hours from 8.30am to 6pm Monday to Friday. However, one of the practice GPs is available on call from 8am to 8.30am and 6pm to 6.30pm Monday to Friday (this out of hours service is managed internally by the practice by using their internal on call mobile protocol). The practice has a range of different types of appointments for patients every weekday from 8.30am to 5.50pm including open access appointments with a duty GP. Extended hours appointments are available Monday to Friday from 6.30pm to 7pm at the premises.

There are five GP partners and three salaried GPs at the practice. Three GPs are male and five female. The 43 weekly sessions provided are equivalent to 5.4 working time equivalent (WTE) GPs. The practice employs a nurse team leader, a nurse practitioner, two practice nurses and two health care assistants. The practice manager is supported by a reception team leader and an administration team leader, a team of administrative and reception staff.

Services are provided via a General Medical Services (GMS) contract (GMS contracts are negotiated nationally between GP representatives and the NHS). Services are provided from following main location and the branch practice, and patients can attend any of the two practice premises. We visited only the main premises during this inspection.

Temple Cowley Health Centre (the main practice)

Temple Road

Oxford

Oxfordshire

OX4 2HL

Horspath Village Hall (the branch practice, opens once a month)

Oxford Road

Horspath

Oxfordshire

OX33 1RT

The practice has opted out of providing out of hours services to their patients. There are arrangements in place for services to be provided when the practice is closed and

these are displayed at the practice, in the practice information leaflet and on the patient website. Out of hours services are provided during protected learning time by Oxford Health Out of Hours Service or after 6.30pm, weekends and bank holidays by calling NHS 111.

Overall inspection

Good

Updated 5 December 2017

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Temple Cowley Medical Group on 22 February 2017. The overall rating for the practice was requires improvement, with ratings of requires improvement in the safe, responsive and well-led domains. The full comprehensive report from this inspection can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Temple Cowley Medical Group on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

This inspection was an announced focused inspection carried out on 19 October 2017 to confirm that the practice had carried out their plan to meet the legal requirements in relation to the breaches in regulations that we identified in our previous inspection in February 2017. This report covers our findings in relation to those requirements and also additional improvements made since our last inspection.

Overall the practice is now rated as good.

Our key findings were as follows:

There had been reviews of the practices’ systems and processes to improve governance and identify where improvements to service should be made.
The practice had assessed and mitigated risks identified during the last CQC inspection.
Medicines management and infection control processes had improved.
Patient feedback regarding waiting times had improved.

The practice made changes to its services where we suggested it should consider improvements:

The practice reviewed all patients who did not attend programmes for cancer screening where they were eligible to attend. The practice manager informed us that these patients were contacted to encourage them to attend screening. We reviewed data which indicated that within the Oxford locality of 25 practices the practice was ranked ninth for bowel cancer screening and fifth for cervical cancer screening for 25 to 49 year olds.
The system for reviewing and acting on patient correspondence had improved and we saw that the workflow of clinical letters and correspondence was well managed. There were no significant backlogs of unreviewed patient correspondence on the day of inspection.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)

Chief Inspector of General Practice