Harbour Medical Practice

Background to this inspection

Updated 18 September 2017

Harbour Medical Practice is situated in the coastal town of Eastbourne, East Sussex and operates from:

Harbour Medical Practice

1 Pacific Drive

Sovereign Harbour North

Eastbourne

East Sussex

BN23 6DW

The practice provides services for approximately 6,800 patients living within the local area. The practice holds a general medical services (GMS) contract with NHS England for the provision of primary care services. (A GMS contract is one between the practice and NHS England where elements of the contract such as opening times are standard.) The practice has larger numbers of patients aged 65 and older compared to the national average. Deprivation is low when compared to the population nationally.

As well as a team of two GP partners and two salaried GPs (three male and one female), the practice also employs an advanced nurse practitioner, two practice nurses, two health care assistants and a sonographer. A practice manager and a business manager are employed and there is a team of receptionists and administrative clerks.

Harbour Medical Practice is open between 8.30am and 6.30pm on weekdays and appointments are available from 8.30am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday with extended hours appointments available on Tuesdays from 6.30pm to 8.30pm. Between 8am and 8.30am calls were diverted to an out of hours service (provided by NHS 111). There is a duty GP each day available for phone appointments and urgent face to face appointments according to patient need. Routine appointments are bookable up to four weeks in advance. Patients are able to book appointments by phone, online or in person.

There are weekly midwifery and health visitor clinics along with a regular ultrasound service all run from the premises. The practice has an onsite operating theatre and provides a vasectomy service for NHS patients in East Sussex.

Separate organisations providing mental health, smoking cessation, podiatry, physiotherapy, acupuncture, osteopathy and lymphoedema all rent rooms from the practice and provide services to local people.

Patients are provided with information on how to access the duty GP or the out of hours service (provided by NHS111) by calling the practice or by referring to its website.

The practice is registered to provide the regulated activities of diagnostic and screening procedures; treatment of disease, disorder and injury; maternity and midwifery services; family planning and surgical procedures.

Overall inspection

Good

Updated 18 September 2017

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

At our previous comprehensive inspection at Harbour Medical Practice on 18 January 2017 we found breaches of regulation relating to the safe care and treatment and good governance. The overall rating for the practice was requires improvement and specifically we found the practice to require improvement for the provision of safe and effective services. It was good for providing, caring, responsive and well-led services. Consequently we rated all population groups as requires improvement. The previous inspection reports can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Harbour Medical Practice on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

This inspection was an announced desktop inspection carried out on 16 August 2017 to confirm that the practice had carried out their plan to meet the legal requirements in relation to the breaches in regulations that we identified in our previous inspection on 18 January 2017. This report covers our findings in relation to those requirements and improvements made since our last inspection.

We found the practice had made the required improvements since our last inspection and was meeting the regulations that had previously been breached. We have amended the rating for this practice to reflect these changes. The practice is now rated good for the provision of safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led services. Overall the practice is rated as good.

Our key findings were as follows:

There had been improved monitoring of training and staff had access and received the training required to support them in their specific roles.
Improved risk assessment and action plans were in place.
Medicine review monitoring had improved to ensure safer prescribing of high risk medicines.
There had been action taken to improve the management of patients with long term conditions.

The provider had taken action on areas we suggested they should make improvements:

A new appointment system had been implemented for patients to stagger the availability of appointments. When urgent appointments were not available, GPs called back a patient to undertake an assessment of how urgent their need was to either offer advice or an appointment. The practice informed us the new system had received positive comments. The practice informed us that patients who ‘do not attend’ appointments had fallen from 79 appointments in December 2016 to 55 in June 2017.
The practice implemented a new carers’ protocol. There was a carers’ champion in place at the practice to help support the needs of carers.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP

Chief Inspector of General Practice