GPs under pressure after poor ratings
ALMOST a quarter of Southport and Formby’s GP services have been rated as inadequate or requiring further improvement.
The figure was revealed as part of analysis by the Health Service Journal (HSJ) which compared Care Quality Commission reports from 6,476 surgeries around the country.
The HSJ published a list of CCGs in the North of England with the highest percentage of GP surgeries rated requires improvement or inadequate; Southport and Formby comes in second (23.1%) after Hambleton, Richmondshire and Whitby (27.3%)
The CQC, which inspects GP surgeries as well as other medical and care centres, rates GP practices on whether they are safe; effective; caring; responsive and well-led.
Bosses said the worst rated practices were in areas that suffered from overcrowding and were struggling to attract GPs, adding constant strain to the health service.
All practices across England have now been inspected at least once, with 4% rated “outstanding” and 84% rated “good”.
A spokesperson at NHS Southport and Formby CCG, said: “Out of the 16 of our GP practices that have been inspected by the CQC to date, two GP practices were rated ‘requires improvement’ and one was rated as ‘inadequate’.
“This results in 18.75% being rated requires improvement or inadequate, rather than 23.1% as quoted in the HSJ article. “It is important to note that these figures may not give the most upto-date picture as practices are often revisited and receive an improved rating fairly quickly.
“When GP practices are identified as having problems, NHS England, who jointly commission the GP practices with ourselves, has a process in place to work closely with them to resolve any issues as quickly as possible.
“The priority is patient safety and ensuring access to good, high quality GP services.
“We are confident that the action plans for the three GP practices in this report will be completed fully and overall performance at these GP practices will get better.
“We would also like to note that those rated ‘requires improvement’ were rated ‘good’ in other areas such as caring, effective and responsive which is great to see and we will focus on the other areas now to improve the ratings; 81.25% of the GP practices inspected to date were rated as good and in some aspects of the report, two GP practices were rated as outstanding in certain categories.
“Three of our practices are yet to be inspected.
“To add to this, in a recent GP patient survey, an independent survey run across the UK, 90% of patients voted ‘very good’ or ‘fairly good’ in relation to overall satisfaction with their GP surgery in the Southport and Formby area, compared to the national average of 85%.”