Surgery rated as inadequate by inspectors

A Peterborough doctor's surgery has been placed into special measures after inspectors rated it as inadequate.
Dogsthorpe Medical CentreDogsthorpe Medical Centre
Dogsthorpe Medical Centre

The Dogsthorpe Medical Centre was rated as inadequate in all except one of the 10 categories in the latest Care Quality Commission (CQC) report, and was also given an overall grade of inadequate.

Now staff at the centre, in Poplar Avenue, are working to address concerns, including appointing new staff members, and a communications expert to help patients book appointments.

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In the report, chief inspector of general practice professor Steve Field said: “Significant events were not managed well and the practice was not signed up to receive relevant safety update alerts.

“Some staff undertook chaperone duties without having proper disclosure and barring checks in place. Fire evacuation drills were not practiced regularly.”

He also added: “Breast and bowel screening rates for patients were low, and antibiotic prescribing was high compared to local and national averages.”

However, he did say there had been improvements since the last inspection in May 2015.

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He said: “During this inspection, we found that the practice had taken some action to address the shortfalls: infection control audits were now routinely undertaken, clinical audits were of better quality, whole practice meetings were being held and recruitment checks were more robust for permanent staff.”

A spokesman for the centre said work was being done to improve the rating.

The spokesman said: “Dogsthorpe Medical Centre is extremely disappointed with the latest CQC assessment as the medical team had made significant progress since the previous inspection. The CQC noted the progress but felt that more could have been achieved.

“One of the critical issues for us to improve on was identified as improving access to appointments. We have since appointed two new members of staff to the clinical team in order to increase the number of appointments available who started in June.

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“A secondconcern was patients ability to get through on the telephone at busy times and we have a communications expert looking into how best to improve this in future as well as requesting patients to phone in for test results or other non-urgent enquiries at less busy times of day.”

The report is available at www.cqc.org.uk

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