Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Sands End Health Clinic on 20 April 2016. The overall rating for the practice was good but required improvement for providing safe services. This was specifically in relation to some aspects of medicines management and fire safety precautions. The full comprehensive report on the 20 April 2016 inspection can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Sands End Health Clinic on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
This inspection was a follow up desk based focused inspection carried out on 19 May 2017 to confirm that the practice had carried out their plan to meet the legal requirements in relation to the breach in regulation that we identified in our previous inspection on 20 April 2016. This report covers our findings in relation to those requirements and also additional improvements made since our last inspection.
The practice is now rated good for providing safe services and the overall rating remains as good.
Our key findings were as follows:
- Improvements had been made in the management and storage of medicines which now included an effective fridge temperature monitoring process and, a system to monitor that all medicines kept at the practice were in date.
- Effective fire safety arrangements were now in place including fire extinguishers that were fit for purpose.
We also reviewed the actions taken since the last inspection to the areas where we identified the practice should make improvement and saw that they had been addressed.
Our findings were as follows;
- Staff who undertook chaperone duties had undertaken additional training to expand their competency skills to effectively perform the role.
- Improvements had been made to the practice’s cervical screening uptake rates. Data for 2015/16 showed that the percentage of women aged 25 to 64 years of age who had a cervical screening test performed in the preceding 5 years was comparable with the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and national averages.
- The practice had increased the number of patients identified as carers and currently had a carer’s register of 167 patients (2% of the practice list size).
- Information about interpreting services was now made available to patients.
- Arrangements were in place for the purchase of a new hearing loop to assist patients with a hearing impairment.
Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)
Chief Inspector of General Practice