St Paul's Medical Centre

Updated 7 February 2024

St Pauls Medical Centre is located at Dickson Road, North Shore, Blackpool FY1 2HH.

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

The practice is situated within the NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria (ICB) and delivers a General Medical Services contract (GMS) to a patient population of over 11000 patients. This is part of a contract held with NHS England. The practice is part of a wider Primary Care Network (PCN).

St Pauls Medical Centre has a higher than the national average percentage of patients in the over 65 age group, and lower levels of income deprivation when compared to other practices in the local area. They score 1 (of 10) on the deprivation rating scale with 1 being the lowest score.

The practice is open between 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday The practice offered extended hours every Tuesday and Wednesday from 6.30pm to 8 pm and funded another healthcare organisation to provide extended hours from 8am to 8pm on Saturday and Sunday.

Out of hours services are provided by 111.

Updated 7 February 2024

We carried out a targeted assessment of St Pauls Medical Centre in relation to the responsive key question. This assessment was carried out on 19 December 2023 without a site visit. Overall, the practice is rated as Good. We rated the key question of responsive as Good.

Safe - Good

Effective – Good

Caring - Good

Responsive – Good

Well-led – Good

The full reports for previous inspections can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for the St Pauls Medical Centre on our website at www.cqc.org.uk

Why we carried out this inspection

We carried out this assessment as part of our work to understand how practices are working to try to meet demand for access and to better understand the experiences of people who use services and providers.

How we carried out the inspection

This inspection was carried out remotely.

This included:

• Conducting staff interviews using video conferencing.
• Requesting evidence from the provider.

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:

• Patients who responded to the National GP Survey stated it was easy to contact the practice. The practice fell slightly below national averages for overall experience and satisfaction of making an appointment and below average for people’s overall experience of their appointment.
• Since the National GP Survey the practice had made significant improvements to their appointments system.
• The practice used performance data to target and improve access.
• The practice understood the needs of its local population and had carried out an in-depth analysis of their patient population and developed services accordingly.
• The practice had worked collaboratively within its primary care network and GP federation to ensure additional types of appointments and extended hours were available.
• The practice dealt with complaints in a timely manner and learned from them.

We found examples outstanding practice:

• The practice worked collaboratively with the citizens advice bureaux to offer appointments to patients who required financial or legal support.
• The practice created high quality video content to promote health and wellbeing in children. This had been so successful they had went on to work with NHSE to create video content aimed at promoting women’s health.

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

• Continue to develop solutions to provide better access to their patients and continue to robustly monitor access to the practice in order to ensure patient satisfaction continues to increase.

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 Hospitals and Interim Chief Inspector of Healthcare