Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at the Southville Surgery on 9 February 2016. Following our comprehensive inspection overall the practice was rated as good with requires improvement for the safe domain. Following the inspection we issued a requirement notice. The notice was issued due to a breach of Regulation 12 of The Health and Social Care Act (Regulated Activity) Regulations 2014, Safe care and treatment. The requirement notice was for the practice to implement the necessary changes to ensure patients who used the service were protected against any risks associated with the safe management of the medicines, the checking of emergency equipment and the safe management of blank prescriptions. A copy of the report detailing our findings can be found at www.cqc.org.uk.
Our key findings during this inspection were as follows:
The areas where the provider must make improvement were:
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The medicine management policy was not fully implemented which impacted on the safe management of medicines by the practice specifically key security, storage of controlled medicines, ensuring patient medicines were returned to the pharmacy and ensuring regular checks of the stock kept in the practice.
The areas where the provider should make improvement were:
- The practice should ensure they undertake checks through the Disclosure and Barring Service for personnel employed to carry on the regulated activities.
- All pre-employment checks should be fully recorded.
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The practice should review how blank prescriptions were received and distributed around the practice.
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Ensure the checks for the emergency oxygen and the defibrillator were recorded.
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Arrangements for infection control should ensure areas identified for action were followed through.
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The practice should review the arrangements for checking results and introduce a formalised processed which ensured they were reviewed within an agreed timeframe.
We undertook this focused inspection on 17 October 2016 to follow up the requirement to assess if the practice had implemented the changes needed to ensure patients who used the service were safe.
Our key findings across all the areas we inspected during this inspection were as follows:
The remaining area where the provider should make improvement following the inspection on 9 February 2016 is :
Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)
Chief Inspector of General Practice