Healthcare provider placed in special measures as two Peterborough medical centres rated as inadequate

Bretton Park Healthcare has promised to carry out an improvement action plan after both of the medical centres it operates were rated as inadequate by the CQC. This also saw the provider placed into special measures.

Both Bretton Medical Practice and Park Medical Centre were given the lowest possible grading by the official body after simultaneous inspections in November, the results of which were published in February.

In the areas that inspections are broken down into both were rated ‘inadequate’ for Safe, Effective and Well-led alongside ‘requires improvement’ for Responsive. Whether or not services were Caring was inspected but not rated.

Safe

The joint report found that not all medicines were prescribed safely to patients, the practices failed to have a system to manage test results and patient correspondence to ensure appropriate clinical oversight and action within a timely manner and that appropriate recruitment checks for new staff were not always completed.

Effective

It was found that patients’ needs were not always assessed, and treatment was not always delivered in line with current legislation and standards and that the practices were unable to demonstrate that staff had all the skills, knowledge, and experience to carry out their roles.

Staff were found to not always correctly review patients in a timely manner and to not be consistent and proactive in helping patients to live healthier lives. There were significant backlogs of patients with a learning disability who had not been reviewed in the last year.

Responsive

Patients reported difficulties getting through via the phone to book an appointment and that information on how to make a complaint was not readily available online. The CQC also criticised the fact that complaints were not always shared with staff.

Well-led

A lack of leadership and oversight from the provider to ensure that services were delivered in a safe and effective way to patients was criticised. The CQC said that there was no clear vision, credible strategy or culture to provide high-quality sustainable care.

There was also little evidence of systems and processes for learning, continuous improvement and innovation.

There were also a number of legal requirements that were found to have not been met. It was found that the practice did not have systems to ensure that staff had been recruited safely and it was found that the practice had not undertaken a DBS check prior to a staff member starting work.

The practices’ system was found not to ensure that all staff received mandatory training and to have failed to keep track of the vaccination status of staff.

There was also no effective system for the coding of patients’ medical records to ensure that patient records contained accurate information and received appropriate care.

The provider will be inspected again within six months.

A spokesperson for Bretton Park Healthcare said: “Bretton Park Healthcare would like to thank the staff, patients and carers who took part in the recent CQC inspection. The report summarises the challenges we face during times of extremely high demand and a high number of patients utilising our practice.

“We are particularly pleased that the CQC highlighted a culture of openness and honesty throughout all levels of the organisation and were impressed with the care and compassion of our teams.

“We recognise the areas for improvement raised by the CQC and we have developed focused action plans to improve safety and efficiency. We are working with our teams and NHS system colleagues to implement these action plans whilst continuing to respond to operational pressures. We are absolutely determined to improve.”