A new management team will be put in place at Dashwood Medical Centre in Ramsgate from Monday, August 28 (updated time scale) following enforcement action by the Care Quality Commission.
Existing staff will remain at the practice but will be joined by a team from Northdown Surgery, as revealed by The Isle of Thanet News earier this month.
The changes come after the practice was placed in special measures by the CQC last year and a follow up inspection in May found continued breaches.
Dashwood Medical Centre is a 5 GP practice with around 10,000 patients. The practice was issued two notices for breaches and warned to ensure care and treatment was provided in a safe way.
The service was rated Inadequate overall. Individual area ratings were inadequate for safety, require improvement for effective services, Good for caring, requires improvement for responsiveness and Inadequate for how the service is led.
The follow-up inspection found the required improvements had not been made and so enforcement action, which could be appealed, has been taken.
Inspectors found:
- Improvements to the practice’s systems, practices and processes were insufficient and didn’t always keep people safe and safeguarded from abuse.
- The practice had made improvements to systems and processes to help maintain appropriate standards of cleanliness and hygiene. However, some infection prevention and control issues were ongoing and hadn’t been managed in a timely manner.
- Staff didn’t always have access to the information they needed to deliver safe care and treatment.
- Complaints were investigated and responded to in a timely manner but inspectors could not find evidence to show learning from complaints was being shared with staff.
- Improvements had been made to the management of backlogs of laboratory results and outstanding documents that required action. However, management of tasks, and test requests was insufficient.
CQC concerns
Neil Cox, CQC deputy director of operations in the south, said: “When we inspected Dashwood Medical Centre we were concerned for people using the service that leaders hadn’t been able to make the required improvements since our previous inspection. This is despite us telling them in detail in the last report, as well as in warning notices where they needed to improve.
“The practice didn’t have clear systems and processes in place in order to provide effective treatment to people and keep them safe. At our last inspection we found a large backlog of laboratory results and outstanding documents in relation to people’s test results. Whilst there had been some improvements there were still issues identified with the management of test results due to IT issues.
“We found that people weren’t being monitored in line with best practice guidelines. For example, we saw monitoring interventions being missed to check it was still safe for people to receive certain medicines.
“It was also concerning staff weren’t still up to date with all of their essential training, including safeguarding training, and do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation (DNACPR) forms weren’t being completed in line with legislation.”
New management
The new management team will focus on making the necessary improvements highlighted in the Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection.
Patients registered at Dashwood Medical Centre do not need to do anything. Phone numbers and how patients contact the medical centre will not change.
Repeat prescriptions will continue to be provided in the same way patients receive them now and the types of services offered at the practice will remain the same.
‘No disruption’
NHS Kent and Medway’s Director of Primary Care Commissioning Sukh Singh said: “We have worked closely with the team at Dashwood Medical Centre to make sure that there is no disruption to patients.
“The new management team will take steps to address the issues identified by the CQC and we will continue to work with the new management team and the CQC to make sure that the necessary improvements are made.”
The new management team – Dr Geevarghese, Dr Peshen, Dr Ricks, Dr Dharmasena and Dr Misra – are GPs based at the Northdown Surgery in Margate.
Dr Geevarghese, lead partner at Northdown practice said: “We have many years of experience in managing GP practices and will also recruit additional staff to oversee the day-to-day running and management of Dashwood Medical Centre.
“We are pleased that we have been able to make sure that Dashwood Medical Centre remains open for patients and look forward to getting to know them.”
NHS bosses say the changes will not impact patient care at Northdown Surgery.
Patients registered with Dashwood Medical Practice who have any questions should email [email protected].
NHS working on ‘future arrangements’ for Dashwood Medical Centre in Ramsgate as lead GP due to retire
Dashwood surgery in Ramsgate placed in special measures by Care Quality Commission
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