• Doctor
  • Urgent care service or mobile doctor

Archived: YDUC Maple House

Overall: Good read more about inspection ratings

Maple House - Ground Floor, Clifton Park Avenue, York, North Yorkshire, YO30 5PB

Provided and run by:
Vocare Limited

Latest inspection summary

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Background to this inspection

Updated 17 November 2017

In April 2015 Yorkshire Doctors Urgent Care (YDUC) launched a new Integrated Urgent Care Centre (UCC) service and Out-of-Hours (OOHs) service through a contract with the Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). They provide an urgent care centre and an OOHs service from York Hospital to approximately 297,000 patients.

YDUC also provide an OOHs service for the Vale of York CCG from the New Selby War Memorial Hospital. YDUC is part of a national organisation, Vocare Limited, which provides urgent care services to 10 million patients across the United Kingdom.

YDUC Maple House is the regional office for Yorkshire Doctors Urgent Care (YDUC). The YDUC regional management, pharmacy and dispatch teams and the Vocare Limited national human resource team are all based at Maple House. The dispatch team monitor the activity of the service across four YDUC locations and ensure that requests for call backs and home visits are dealt with within the required timeframes. They follow up patients who may be vulnerable or at risk that do not attend for appointments, for example children. They also provide ‘comfort calls’ to patients to inform them of any delays with home visits or calls backs.

York – Urgent Care Centre (UCC) provides an urgent care service as part of a pilot with York Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and is based in the York hospital accident and emergency (A/E) department. Patients attending the urgent care centre can walk in at any time between 8am & 11pm 365 days a year. They are logged in at the A/E department and then streamed to the most appropriate service. If it is a primary care illness they are directed to UCC - York staff and if it is a minor injury they stay in the Trust system.

The out- of- hours (OOHs) service is also based in the York hospital accident and emergency (A/E) department. The OOHs service is provided from 6.30pm to 8am Monday to Friday and 24 hours throughout Saturday, Sunday and Bank Holidays. Calls to the OOHs service are handled by the NHS 111 telephone number. Patients are informed whether they will receive a telephone triage by the clinician in YDUC or face to face contact. The calls are passed directly to the YDUC system and  appointments are directly booked for patients in the YDUC diary. YDUC operates a triage model where all patients receive clinical telephone assessments. This prevents unnecessary journeys for patients and enables appropriate coordination of home visits and appointments according to clinical urgency and demand.

There is a Local Clinical Director for YDUC Maple House and the UCC – York, and a stable clinical staff team. There is one full time GP and 10 part time GPs who work across the UCC – York and the UCC - Selby. There are two full time and one part time nurses who work across the UCC – York and the UCC – Selby. There are also 67 bank GPs and one bank nurse who work across the UCC – York and the UCC – Selby (bank staff are GPs and nurses who are not employed permanently by YDUC but who are available to work as and when required). All of the clinicians, permanent and bank, will work across all the centres covered by YDUC as and when required.

The service employs a number of both male and female GPs and nursing staff from the local community. The clinicians are supported by an administration / call handling team, receptionists, drivers and a management team who are responsible for the day to day running of the service.

The service supported the training of GP Registrars; doctors who are training to become GPs.

Overall inspection

Good

Updated 17 November 2017

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Yorkshire Doctors Urgent Care (YDUC) – Maple House and York – Urgent Care Centre on 30 and 31 August 2017. Overall the service is rated as good.

Our key findings across all the areas we inspected were as follows:

  • There was an open and transparent approach to safety and an effective system in place for recording, reporting and learning from significant events.
  • Risks to patients were assessed and well managed.
  • Patients’ care needs were assessed and delivered in a timely way according to need. The service met the National Quality Requirements.
  • Staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence based guidance. Staff had been trained to provide them with the skills, knowledge and experience to deliver effective care and treatment. Staff had access to and made use of e-learning training modules and in-house training.
  • There was a system in place that enabled staff access to patient records. The out-of-hours staff provided other services, for example the local GP and hospital, with information following contact with patients as was appropriate.
  • The service managed patients’ care and treatment in a timely way.
  • Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.
  • Information about services and how to complain was available and easy to understand. Improvements were made to the quality of care as a result of complaints and concerns.
  • The service had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs. The vehicles used for home visits were clean and well equipped.
  • There was a clear leadership structure and staff felt supported by management. The service proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on.
  • The provider was aware of and complied with the requirements of the duty of candour (The duty of candour is a set of specific legal requirements that providers of services must follow when things go wrong with care and treatment).

However there was an area of practice where the provider needed to make improvements.

The provider should:

  • Monitor that all staff are up to date with mandatory training refresher updates.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice