Archived: Southampton Primary Care Ltd

Updated 16 December 2019

Southampton Primary Care Ltd is one of eight registered locations of the provider Southampton Primary Care Limited (SPCL). SPCL is a GP federation delivering primary healthcare services to approximately 350,000 patients across the city of Southampton. Of the 26 GP practices in Southampton, 24 are member practices and are shareholders in the federation. The member practices are:

• Aldermoor Surgery
• Alma Medical Centre
• Atherley House Surgery
• Bath Lodge Surgery
• Brook House Surgery
• Cheviot Road Surgery
• Highfield Health
• Hill Lane Surgery
• Living Well Partnership
• Lordshill Health Centre
• Mulberry Surgery
• Old Fire Station Surgery
• Raymond Road Surgery
• Shirley Health Partnership
• St Mary’s Surgery
• St Peters Surgery
• Stoneham Lane Surgery
• Townhill Surgery
• University Health Service
• Victor Street Surgery
• Walnut Tree Surgery
• West End Road Surgery
• Woolston Lodge Surgery

Patients from any of these member practices can have access to any of the services provided by SPCL.

SPCL has eight registered locations which act as hub sites for patients to access the services it delivers.

The registered hub sites are:

• Aldermoor Surgery
• Chessel Branch Surgery
• Lordshill Health Centre
• Nicholstown Surgery
• Shirley Health Centre
• Southampton Primary Care Ltd
• St Mary’s Surgery
• Woolston Lodge.

Locations have been chosen to provide the best spread of access for patients across the city. There are three hub sites open across the city at any one time.

This inspection focused on the registered location Southampton Primary Care Ltd which acted as the head office for the provider and the central base for call handling and the acute visiting service and enhanced health in care homes.

Enhanced access central booking service (call centre/central reception)

Patients are currently unable to book directly for appointments with SPCL to access enhanced access services. Patients contact their GP practice who can request an enhanced access appointment through SPCL and then relay this information to the patient directly. The head office location (Southampton Primary Care Ltd) staffed the central reception/call centre area whereby staff were taking calls from GP member practices and 111 to book patients into appointment slots.

Acute visiting service

This service is available for all patients registered with GPs in Southampton and covers those who are unable to attend GP practices for appointments. The acute visiting service operates in addition to the home visits undertaken by GP practices. Home visits through this service are booked in the same way as through the enhanced access route. GPs attending home visits use the location Southampton Primary Care Ltd as a base for when undertaking visits.

Enhanced health in care homes

This service is a multi-disciplinary team approach to providing enhanced care in care homes across Southampton City. The team work closely with the residents usual GP to provide additional support and services.

The registered location Southampton Primary Care Ltd operates from the following address:

Sovereign Place,

Upper Northam Road

Hedge End

Southampton

Hampshire

SO30 4BZ

The service is registered to provide the following regulated activities:

Diagnostic and screening services

Family Planning

Surgical Procedures

Treatment of disease disorder and injury

Southampton Primary Care Limited provides the following services to the public:

• Enhanced access
• Physiotherapy
• Long Acting Reversible Contraception
• Acute Visiting Service
• Care Homes
• Training

We only inspected some services provided to the public as not all services offered were in scope for CQC registration for regulated activities. We did not inspect the Physiotherapy services as currently this is out of scope. We did not inspect the Long Acting Reversible Contraception (LARC) service as no clinical treatments were operating from this registered location. LARC services were undertaken at the hub sites which had separate inspections and reports.

How we inspected this service

During our visit we:

• Reviewed information held about this service.
• Spoke with the registered manager, board level directors, service level managers and a range of employees of the provider.
• Reviewed provider documents and policies
• Reviewed feedback from staff and patients as obtained from survey results and public data.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we always ask the following five questions:

• Is it safe?
• Is it effective?
• Is it caring?
• Is it responsive to people’s needs?
• Is it well-led?

These questions therefore formed the framework for the areas we looked at during the inspection

Updated 16 December 2019

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Southampton Primary Care Ltd on 10 October 2019 as part of our inspection programme.

This service is registered with Care Quality Commission (CQC) under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 in respect of some, but not all, of the services it provides. There are some general exemptions from regulation by CQC which relate to particular types of service and these are set out in The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.

The chief executive officer is the registered manager. A registered manager is a person who is registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

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

• There were clear systems and processes in place to keep people safe and safeguarded from abuse.
• Staff had the information they required in order to deliver safe holistic care to patients even when the clinician had not seen the patient previously.
• There were clear documented processes in place to record significant events and share learning from these.

We rated the practice as outstanding for providing effective services because:

• The provider (Southampton Primary Care Limited – SPCL) had engaged in a variety of innovative pilot programmes and undertaken quality reviews of the impact these had on the wider healthcare system. Impact to patients as a result of these projects included providing enhanced health care in patient homes, reducing the demand of home visits undertaken by GP practices, and a reduction in emergency admissions to hospital. The provider has expanded on this improvement since the pilots were undertaken.
• SPCL maintained strong links with other healthcare organisations and was able to provide additional support when other organisations were at capacity in order to ensure patients were able to get their healthcare needs met.

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

• Staff helped patients to be involved in decisions about care and treatment particularly when undertaking the enhanced health in care homes services.
• Patients needs were taken into account and information was available in languages other than English when required.

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

• The provider had been commissioned to deliver enhanced access to primary care services across the geographical area of Southampton City serving a patient population of over 350,000.
• Hub working arrangements delivered by Southampton Primary Care Limited meant that patients had access to a range of services including home visiting when appropriate in order to meet the needs. All calls to book appointments came through a central booking system operating from head office location.

We rated the practice as outstanding for providing well-led services because:

• The culture of the practice and the way it was led and managed drove the delivery and improvement of high-quality, person-centred care.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP
Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care