‘Patients put at risk’ at doctors’ surgery
PRACTICE FAILED TO TELL FOUR PEOPLE ABOUT DRUGS CONCERNS, BUT BOSSES SAY IMPROVEMENTS MADE FOLLOWING POOR INSPECTION
A GP surgery which failed to tell patients about concerns over drugs they were taking has been put into special measures.
The Lakes Medical Practice, in Salford, has been rated ‘inadequate’ by the Care Quality Commission.
Inspectors say patients are being put at risk, and if changes aren’t made quickly then ‘urgent enforcement action’ will be taken.
If things don’t improve enough, then the Swinton surgery could be closed, but bosses said they had made ‘really positive improvements’ and strive to provide the highest quality of care.
The CQC’s inspection in January this year highlighted a number of concerns including at least four patients who were not told about concerns over a drug they were taking after an alert was put out.
Inspectors say the surgery should have called the patients in to discuss the medicine alert, but staff failed to do so.
The report also found that administration staff had not had any formal training on assessing patients.
It read: “For example, we were told that patients presenting with certain conditions such as chicken pox would be directed to the pharmacist by administration staff rather than being offered an appointment with a clinician.”
Other concerns included the lack of record keeping, with meetings not always documented and safety checks not recorded.
The Lakes Medical Practice was rated inadequate in two out of five key areas – safety and well-led. It was given ‘requires improvement’ for effectiveness and responsiveness, and ‘good’ for caring.
But staff were praised for treating patients with kindness, respect and compassion, and showing an understanding for their personal, cultural, social and religious needs.
Beverley Cole, head of general practice for the north, said: “It was worrying that we found that recent medicine alerts had not been acted on and when we asked the practice to perform a search on a recent drug alert, we found four patients on this drug had not been recalled to discuss the alert. This potentially put patients at risk.
“We some saw evidence of meetings taking place, however they were not frequent; the last team meeting was held in October 2017. We found that significant events that happened after this time that had not been discussed.
“Clinical meetings were happening regularly but these were not minuted. Therefore it was difficult to identify what had taken place and what learning had been shared.
“The practice told us that they were committed to the needs of their service users and would involve them in decision making about their treatment and care. However, on the day of the inspection we found a lack of strategy in the overall management of the service. The practice was unable to demonstrate an effective strategy in respect of managing safety.
“It is important that the people who are registered with The Lakes Medical Practice can rely on getting high quality care. The service has been placed in special measures and will be kept under review and, if needed, could be escalated to urgent enforcement action, and if there is not enough improvement we will move to close the service.”
A spokesman for The Lakes Medical Practice said: “We became aware a few months ago that a few of our older processes were letting us down, and we’ve since made really positive improvements and this has massively benefitted the practice.
“We are confident these changes will be reflected in the re-grading in a few months time.
“We have taken the report very seriously and as a practice strive to provide the highest quality of patient care.”