MEDICAL CENTRE TOLD TO IMPROVE AFTER INSPECTION
Care Board pledges to address concerns
A MEDICAL practice has been ordered to improve after concerns were raised over the way it provides care and treatment to patients.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) carried out an unannounced inspection at Harley Street Medical Centre, in Hanley, in May.
The inspection looked at if the practice was safe, how effective it was and how well it was managed. The facility – which cares for more than 9,000 patients and also has a branch surgery at Staffordshire University – had previously been rated as ‘good’ overall when it was last visited by the CQC in October 2018.
Now inspectors have told the Harley Street practice that it ‘requires improvement’ after they found:
Care and treatment was not always provided in a safe way for service users;
The registered person had not done all that was reasonably practicable to mitigate risks to health and safety of patients with long-term conditions receiving care and treatment;
Some governance assurance systems has been ineffective in identifying risks.
The recently published CQC report said: “Patients prescribed high risk medicines had not always received the required blood test monitoring. There were some gaps in the practice’s long-term condition electronic read coding for prediabetes, and not all relevant patients received steroid emergency cards or a follow-up review.”
It adds: “There were patients with a potential missed diagnosis of diabetes or chronic kidney disease (CKD) and patients with CKD, stage four or five, had not always received the required monitoring in the last 12 months. Patients with diabetes, CKD or hypothyroidism had not always received the required monitoring.”
But inspectors did praise staff for dealing with patients with kindness and respect and involving them in decisions about their care. They also noted that the practice adjusted how it delivered services to meet the needs of patients during the pandemic, with patients able to access care and treatment quickly.
Now Harley Street Medical Centre has been told it needs to ensure care and treatment is provided in a safe way to patients in future. The CQC also recommended that the practice should improve the way it carries out medicine reviews and monitor patients at least annually.
Harley Street Medical Centre declined to comment but a spokesman for the Staffordshire and Stoke-on-trent Integrated Care Board said: “We are aware of the latest CQC inspection report and the Staffordshire and Stoke-on-trent Integrated Care Board primary care team will be working closely with the practice to address all the concerns raised and return them to a practice that is rated good.”