High Glades Medical Practice

Updated 26 July 2022

The registered provider is Sydenham House Medical Group which is a primary care at scale organisation that delivers general practice services at five registered locations in England.

High Glades Medical Practice is located at 9A Upper Church Road, St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings, East Sussex, TN37 7AT. The provider also delivers regulated activities at their branch surgery located at St Leonards Medical Centre, 126 Bexhill Road, St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings, East Sussex, TN38 8BL. The practice is situated within the NHS East Sussex Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and has a general medical services contract with NHS England for delivering primary care services to the local community.

As part of our inspection we visited St Leonards Medical Centre, 126 Bexhill Road, St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings, East Sussex, TN38 8BL only.

High Glades Medical Practice has a registered patient population of approximately 18,174 patients. The practice is located in an area with a higher than average deprivation score.

There are arrangements with other providers to deliver services to patients outside of the practice’s working hours.

The practice staff consists of three of the provider’s GP Partners (two male and one female), three salaried GPs (all female), one practice manager, six advanced nurse practitioners (all female), five practice nurses (all female), two healthcare assistants (both female), one paramedic practitioner (male), one assistant practitioner (female), one mental health case worker, one clinical pharmacist, one pharmacy technician, one trainee pharmacy technician, as well as reception and administration staff. The practice also employs locum GPs directly as well as via an agency when required. Practice staff are also supported by the Sydenham House Medical Group management team.

The practice is also a training practice providing training and teaching opportunities to trainee GPs.

High Glades Medical Practice is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to deliver the following regulated activities: diagnostic and screening procedures; family planning; maternity and midwifery services; surgical procedures; treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

Updated 26 July 2022

This practice is rated as Good overall.

The key questions at this inspection are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

The full comprehensive report can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for High Glades Medical Practice on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Why we carried out this inspection:

We carried out an announced inspection at High Glades Medical Practice on 5 July 2022 under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008, as part of our regulatory functions. The inspection was planned to check whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

How we carried out the inspection:

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 inspections differently.

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site. This was in line with all data protection and information governance requirements.

This included:

• Completing clinical searches on the practice’s patient records system and discussing findings with the provider
• Requesting evidence from the provider
• A short site visit

Our judgement of the quality of care at this service is based on a combination of what we found when we inspected, information from our ongoing monitoring of data about services and information from the provider, patients, the public and other organisations.

Our findings:

We have rated this practice as Good overall.

• The practice’s systems, practices and processes kept people safe and safeguarded from abuse.
• There were systems and processes to help maintain appropriate standards of cleanliness and hygiene.
• Risks to patients, staff and visitors were assessed, monitored or managed effectively.
• Staff had the information they needed to deliver safe care and treatment.
• The arrangements for managing medicines kept patients safe.
• The practice learned and made improvements when things went wrong.
• Patients’ needs were assessed, and care as well as treatment were delivered in line with current legislation, standards and evidence-based guidance.
• Staff had the skills, knowledge and experience to carry out their roles.
• Staff treated patients with kindness, respect and compassion.
• Staff helped patients to be involved in decisions about their care and treatment.
• People were able to access care and treatment in a timely way.
• Complaints were listened to and used to improve the quality of care.
• The practice involved the public, staff and external partners to help ensure they delivered high-quality and sustainable care.

Notable practice:

• The practice had initiated and held support group meetings for patient who were peri-menopausal or menopausal.
• Specialist services had been developed for patients who were neurodiverse and the practice was being supported by the Primary Care Network (PCN) to develop these further and share awareness training across the PCN.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Continue with plans to update all records of the monitoring of patients referred to other services under the two week wait system.
• Continue with plans to improve hypnotics prescribing where required.
• Consider revising practice systems to ensure that all prescribing of high-risk medicines continues to follow relevant best practice guidance.
• Continue to act on and learn from all safety alerts.
• Consider revising practice systems to ensure that all reviews of patients with long-term conditions continue to follow relevant best practice guidance.
• Continue with plans to improve uptake of childhood immunisations and the cervical screening programme by relevant patients.
• Continue to implement action plans and monitor improvements to patient satisfaction scores.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP

Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care

Please refer to the detailed report and the evidence tables for further information.