King Street Medical Centre

Updated 24 August 2023

King Street Medical Centre is located in the town of Accrington at:

43 King Street

Accrington

Lancashire

BB5 1QE

The provider is registered with CQC to deliver the regulated activities of diagnostic and screening procedures, maternity and midwifery services and treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

The practice is part of the integrated care system (ICS) for Lancashire and South Cumbria and services are delivered under a General Medical Services (GMS) contract to a patient population of about 1860. The provider is also part of the Hyndburn Rural Primary Care Network (PCN) with 7 other local GP practices.

Information published by Public Health England shows that deprivation within the practice population group is in the lowest decile (1 out of 10). The lower the decile, the more deprived the practice population is relative to others.

According to the latest available data, the ethnic make-up of the practice area is 76.2% White, 22.4% Asian, and 0.2% Other. Available data shows that the practice’s younger population aged 18 years and under, is larger at 24% when compared with the local ICS population of 21.6%. The over 65s patient population is lower at 15.1% compared with 18.9% within the ICS area.

The age distribution of the practice population closely mirrors the local and national averages and the male to female patient ratio is also similar to national averages. There is a lower proportion of patients with a long standing health condition (50.2%) compared with the ICS average of 56.8%.

Two male GPs are the registered partners for the practice and they hold the NHS contract for the services they provide. Dr Bello provides most of the GP consultation sessions at the surgery, with Dr Joseph providing 1 consultation session per week. A female locum GP also works regularly at the service. The GP is supported at the practice by a practice nurse, a practice manager, 2 assistant practice managers and a team of reception/administration staff.

The practice is open between 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday. The practice offers a range of appointment types including book on the day, telephone consultations and advance appointments.

Extended access is provided locally by the East Lancashire Alliance CIC GP federation, where evening appointments are available between 6.30pm to 8.30pm, and on Saturday mornings. Out of hours services are provided by Out of Hours provider East Lancs Medical Services (ELMS) via the NHS 111 service.

Updated 24 August 2023

We carried out an announced follow up inspection at King Street Medical Centre on 19 and 26 July 2023. Overall, the practice is rated as Good.

Safe - Good

Effective - Good

Caring – Not inspected. (Rated Good July 2022)

Responsive - Good

Well-led - Good

This inspection was a follow up focused inspection. We had previously inspected the GP service on 26 and 27 July 2022. That inspection identified shortfalls in meeting the required standards and the GP practice was rated as requires improvement overall with key question safe rated as inadequate. Key questions effective and well led were rated as requires improvement with caring and responsive key questions rated as good. We issued a warning notice for breach of Regulation 12 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 (Safe care and treatment) and a requirement notice for breach of regulation 17 Good Governance. A follow up inspection to review the actions taken by the GP practice in relation to the warning notice (regulation 12 breach) was carried out in November 2022. This showed improvements in all the areas identified within the warning notice for breach of regulation 12 Safe care and treatment.

The inspection reports for this service can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for King Street Medical Centre on our website at www.cqc.org.uk

Why we carried out this inspection.

We carried out this inspection to follow up breaches of regulation from a previous inspection undertaken in July 2022. At this inspection we reviewed 4 key questions: safe, effective, responsive and well led. We found that:

• Improvements observed at the inspection in November 2022 for safe patient prescribing, medicine reviews and the monitoring of fridge temperatures to maintain the cold chain for the safe storage of vaccines had been sustained.
• This inspection identified that all clinical staff were trained to the required safeguarding level; recruitment records were completed appropriately; staff training had been undertaken in infection prevention and control (IPC) and an audit had been undertaken.
• A system of staff appraisal was now in place. Systems to ensure patients with a chronic or long term health condition were established and gaps in the governance arrangements had been addressed.

How we carried out the inspection

Our inspection included:

• Conducting staff interviews using video conferencing, as well as face to face.
• Reviewing feedback received by the CQC regarding the service.
• Completing clinical searches on the practice’s patient records system remotely (this was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements).
• Reviewing patient records to identify issues and clarify actions taken by the provider.
• Reviewing evidence from the provider, including the action plan following the inspection in July 2022.
• Reviewing data available in the public domain.
• A site visit.

Our findings

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 found that:

• The practice provided care in a way that kept patients safe and protected them from avoidable harm.
• Patients received effective care and treatment that met their needs.
• Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care.
• The practice team recognised the challenges of ensuring patient access to the right clinical care and treatment and was working with the primary care team on a quality improvement initiative to seek ways to improve patient access to timely appropriate care and treatment.
• The way the practice leadership team worked with their staff promoted the delivery of high-quality, person-centre care.

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

• Update children’s safeguarding records to include information of all people living within the household.
• Record clearly for patients on their prescription the day they should take their medicine that was prescribed for once a week.
• Change the floor covering on the first floor of the GP practice as planned.
• Continue to recruit people to the Patient Participation Group (PPG).
• Continue implementing strategies to improve patient uptake in areas of cervical screening and child immunisations.
• Include the contact details of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) at the end of final written complaint responses.

Details of our findings and the evidence supporting our ratings are set out in the evidence tables.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Health Care