Out-of-hours GP services placed in special measures

Out-of-hours GP services in east Kent have been plunged into special measures after being rated inadequate by inspectors.

The damning report from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has highlighted a catalogue of failures, including medicine not being recorded properly and a lack of staff to treat patients.

Primecare, which provides the on-call GP services at weekends and overnight, faces having its contract ripped up if it does not improve.

The company looks after 700,000 patients in Canterbury, Ashford, Dover, Deal, Shepway and Thanet.

Inspectors noted there were “frequent medicine discrepancies” between doctors’ bags which was put down to “poor medicines recording”.

This led bosses to centralise where controlled drugs were held to one location in east Kent but it meant medicines were not “readily available when needed”, forcing staff to travel across the county to source and prescribe drugs when required.

The report said: “Emergency medicines were not always easily accessible. The only oxygen available at one primary care centre was in the vehicle so was unavailable if it was on a call.

“We were told this centre was dependent on oxygen from the hospital’s A&E next door. We found some staff who did not know where emergency medicines were located.”

Some staff involved in handling medicines had not received “training appropriate to their role”, the report added.

Recruitment of staff was also shown to be an issue with inspectors noting “the skill mix was unable to meet the needs of patients”.

Many of the company’s staff were restricted from seeing some types of patients, such as young children and pregnant women, and from issuing prescriptions.

The report acknowledged Primecare had “increased the number of GPS and decreased numbers of other staff”.

It added: “Staff said patients were sent to centres where staff on duty could not treat them. Patients then had to be referred to another centre where suitable qualified staff were available.”

But it was reported that staff treated patients with “compassion, dignity and respect”.

Picture: istock.com/copyright Out-of-hours GP services have been rated inadequate in a report by the Care Quality Commission