Battlehill Health Centre

Updated 22 November 2022

Battlehill Health Centre is registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide independent healthcare services. The service provides an extended GP access service from Battlehill Health Centre, Wallsend, Tyne and Wear, NE28 9DX. They also provide a similar service from Oxford Centre, which we inspected on the same day as this service. There are three other extended access locations ran by this provider where services are delivered from GP practices, all of which are registered separately with Care Quality Commission. All five locations are run as one service. The provider of this service is Tynehealth which is a federation representing all of the GP practices in the North Tyneside area. The administrative records for all of the services are held at Hedley Court, Orion Business Park, North Shields, NE29 7ST, which we visited as part of this inspection.

Battlehill Health Centre building is owned by Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. We visited this site as part of this inspection. There was disabled parking and access and the service was on the ground floor. There was a car park close by.

Staff usually work across all five sites. Some are directly employed by the service, most of the clinical staff are bank and locum staff and the GPs work on a self-employed basis.

The service provides extended GP access appointments via;

• The patients’ registered GP.
• NHS 111 service.
• Direct via a telephone booking line
• A video consultation service

There was always a team leader on duty who worked across all of the five locations when the service was open. The service was provided:

• Monday – Friday 6pm – 8.30pm.
• Saturday & Sunday 9am - 5.30pm.
• Bank holidays 10am – 2pm.

During the hours above the provider can offer additional services, such as cervical screening, contraceptive services, heart disease monitoring and NHS Health checks.

An enhanced healthcare service is provided for older people living in care homes which are in two of the primary care networks (PCN) in the area.

The service for patients requiring urgent medical care outside of these and the GP surgery hours is provided by the NHS 111 service.

Updated 22 November 2022

This service is rated as requires improvement overall.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Requires improvement

Are services effective? – Requires improvement

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Requires improvement

Why we carried out this inspection

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Battlehill Health Centre on 21 September 2022 as part of our comprehensive inspection programme.

Our findings

• We saw that some of the systems and policies in place were still being developed. These currently had a poor structure and were not organised.
• The processes for managing risks, issues and performance could be improved.
• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns, and report incidents and near misses.
• Patients received care and treatment that met their needs.
• Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care.
• Staff involved and treated patients with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.

The areas where the provider must make improvements as they are in breach of regulations are:

• Establish effective systems and processes to ensure good governance in accordance with the fundamental standards of care (See Requirement Notice Section at the end of this report for further detail).

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Continue to audit the existing training of staff to ensure mandatory training has been completed.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Hospitals and Interim Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services