Hastings GP Surgery Remains in Special Measures

The CQC has again rated a Hastings GP surgery as Inadequate and recommended the surgery stay in special measures following its latest inspection.

The practice was inspected in July 2016 by a team which included a CQC lead inspector, a GP specialist adviser, a CQC pharmacy inspector and a practice manager specialist adviser.

While the Care Quality Commission found staff caring, treating patients with compassion and dignity, inspectors identified a number of areas for improvement, including:

• Not all nursing staff were trained to the appropriate level of child safeguarding.
• While improvements had been made in relation to appropriate recruitment checks on staff, there were still gaps apparent in relation to recruitment records. 
• Improvements had been made in relation to medicines management however there continued to be some issues relating to this. For example, in relation to the adoption of patient group directions, the availability of emergency medicines, the management of medicine incidents and the use of patients own dressings within the practice.
• There were ongoing maintenance issues identified at the branch surgery and these had not been adequately addressed.
• Staff were clear about reporting incidents, near misses and concerns however there was little evidence of robust investigation processes, learning and communication with staff.
• Complaints were not adequately addressed and associated records of investigations and actions were not kept.

Ruth Rankine, Deputy Chief Inspector of General Practice (South) said: "It is clear that Dr Ankur Chopra has not made enough improvements since our previous inspection, in March 2016, where we again identified serious concerns relating to the safe delivery of services and leadership of the practice.

“We are aware it takes hard work and commitment from all practice staff to deliver the improved services which will result in higher standards of care for patients. We rated caring in the service as being good because there are examples of staff interacting with patients and treating them with dignity and respect. But, there is still a tremendous amount work to do and this needs to move at a pace. If we still feel the service is inadequate at our next inspection, then we will not hesitate to use our enforcement powers to protect patients using the service even if this means removing the registration of the practice.”