The Care Quality Commission
  • Doctor
  • GP practice

Saltley Centre for Health Care

Overall: Requires improvement read more about inspection ratings

1 Cradock Road, Saltley, Birmingham, West Midlands, B8 1RZ

Provided and run by:
Midlands Medical Partnership Saltley and Fernbank

Important: The provider of this service changed. See old profile

All Inspections

During an assessment under our new approach

Date of assessment 13 to 16 May 2024 Saltley Centre for Health Care is a NHS GP practice which provides primary care services to patients in Saltley, Birmingham and surrounding areas within its practice boundary. We carried out an announced assessment of two key questions, caring and responsive. The practice was previously inspected in June 2019 and rated requires improvement in the 4 key questions of effective, caring, responsive and well led with an overall rating of requires improvement. The key question of safe was rated good. Overall, the practice remains requires improvement. However, the key questions safe, caring and responsive are now rated good. We carried out the assessment in response to a decline in data relating to the experiences of people who use services and providers through our ongoing monitoring of services. We recognise the pressure that practices are currently working under, and the efforts staff are making to maintain levels of access for their patients. We recognise the work that GP practices have been engaged in to continue to provide safe, quality care to the people they serve. We know staff are carrying this out whilst the demand for general practice remains exceptionally high, with more appointments being provided than ever. However, in this challenging context, access to general practice remains a concern for people. Our strategy makes a commitment to deliver regulation driven by people’s needs and experiences of care. The assessment of the quality statement equity of access includes looking at what practices are doing innovatively to improve patient access to primary care and sharing this information to drive improvement.

13 June 2019

During a routine inspection

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Saltley Centre for Health Care on 13 June 2019 as part of our inspection programme.

We based our judgement of the quality of care at this service 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.

We have rated this practice as requires improvement overall and requires improvement for all population groups.

We rated the practice as good for providing safe services because:

  • There were effective systems for keeping patients safe from abuse and harm.
  • Risks were generally well managed. The practice was aware that they had a staffing issues and were reliant on the support of locum staff but had plans in place to address.
  • There were effective systems for managing incidents, complaints and safety alerts.
  • Patient records seen were comprehensive and demonstrated appropriate management of patients care and treatment needs.

We rated the practice as requires improvement for providing effective, caring, responsive and well led services and all population groups because:

  • Patient outcomes as reported through national data (prior to the practice merger) showed mixed performance in relation to local and national averages. In particular, diabetes indicators and uptake of national cancer screening was low.
  • There was mixed feedback from patients about the quality of consultations, the practice hoped that improvements in staffing would help improve patient satisfaction.
  • Patient feedback about how they accessed care and treatment in a timely way was below local and national averages. Issues relating to access impacted on all population groups.
  • Leaders were focussed on aligning the practices following the merger to support future resilience and promote high quality care. They were aware of some of the challenges faced in particular around workforce and were working to address those. However, further work was still needed to identify other areas of priority relating to effective and responsive care and in the development of clear action plans for monitoring success.
  • Although there were systems for sharing learning, this did not currently extend to all staff.

Whilst we found no breaches of regulations, the provider should:

  • Complete safeguarding training requirements for all clinical staff in line with the competency framework as set out in the intercollegiate guidance.
  • Improve systems to ensure appropriate supervision of non-medical prescribers.
  • Improve systems for ensuring all staff are involved in learning from areas such as incidents, complaints, alerts and best practice discussions.
  • Review patient outcome and satisfaction data in which the practices have been identified as an outlier to identify how uptake and services could be further improved.
  • Review systems for supporting patients who have been recently bereaved.

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