Updated 16 January 2020
Woolston Lodge is one of eight registered locations of the provider Southampton Primary Care Limited (SPCL). SPCL is a GP federation delivering primary healthcare services to approximately 350,000 patients across the city of Southampton. Of the 26 GP practices in Southampton, 24 are member practices and are shareholders in the federation. The member practices are:
- Aldermoor Surgery
- Alma Medical Centre
- Atherley House Surgery
- Bath Lodge Surgery
- Brook House Surgery
- Cheviot Road Surgery
- Highfield Health
- Hill Lane Surgery
- Living Well Partnership
- Lordshill Health Centre
- Mulberry Surgery
- Old Fire Station Surgery
- Raymond Road Surgery
- Shirley Health Partnership
- St Mary’s Surgery
- St Peters Surgery
- Stoneham Lane Surgery
- Townhill Surgery
- University Health Service
- Victor Street Surgery
- Walnut Tree Surgery
- West End Road Surgery
- Woolston Lodge Surgery
Patients from any of these member practices can access the services provided by SPCL.
SPCL has eight registered locations which act as hub sites for patients to access the services it delivers.
The registered hub sites are:
- Aldermoor Surgery
- Chessel Branch Surgery
- Lordshill Health Centre
- Nicholstown Surgery
- Shirley Health Partnership
- Southampton Primary Care Ltd
- St Mary’s Surgery
- Woolston Lodge.
Locations have been chosen to provide the best spread of access for patients across the city. There are three hub sites open across the city at any one time.
Southampton Primary Care Limited provides the following services to the public (not all services are operational from hub sites):
Enhanced access
If a patient cannot get an appointment with their own GP patients can have access to the enhanced access service offered by SPCL. There are a range of clinicians available including Health care assistants, nurse practitioners and GPs. Patients can access this service by contacting their main GP practice and requesting a hub appointment. Appointments are run city wide from any of the hub locations. Hub locations opening days and times alternate to provide the best possible spread of services and access across the city.
Physiotherapy
Patients can refer directly into this service to see a physiotherapist for a ‘see and treat’ appointment for musculoskeletal issues. At the time of this inspection, CQC did not regulate physiotherapy and as such this element was not inspected.
Long Acting Reversible Contraception
Patients GP practices can refer a patient for a contraceptive appointment. SPCL will receive the referral and arrange directly with the patient a convenient time for an appointment.
Acute visiting service
This service is available for all patients registered with GPs in Southampton and provides a service for those who are unable to attend GP practices for appointments. The acute visiting service operates in addition to the home visits undertaken by GP practices. Home visits through this service are booked in the same way as through the enhanced access route. GPs attending home visits use the location Southampton Primary Care Ltd as a base for these visits.
Enhanced health in care homes
This service is a multi-disciplinary team approach to providing enhanced care in care homes across Southampton City. The team work closely with the residents’ usual GPs to provide additional support and services.
We only inspected some services provided to the public as not all services offered were in scope for CQC registration for regulated activities. We did not inspect the Physiotherapy services as currently this is out of scope. We did not inspect the acute visiting service or enhanced health in care homes as the base location for these was the head office location (Southampton Primary Care Ltd) which had a separate CQC inspection and report.
The registered location Woolston Lodge operates from the following address:
66 Portsmouth Road
Woolston
Southampton
Hampshire
SO19 9AL
The service is registered to provide the following regulated activities:
Diagnostic and screening services
Family Planning
Surgical Procedures
Treatment of disease disorder and injury
For this inspection, we visited the registered location Woolston Lodge. This location acts as one of the hub sites which delivers extended and enhanced services to the population of Southampton. Patients across Southampton access appointments at this hub location if they are unable to get an appointment at their own practice during core GP hours or extended access provisions through their GP. The SPCL hub service is staffed by clinicians who work across the hub locations. Types of clinicians working at the hubs and opening days of the hubs varied in order to provide the best spread of treatment options for patients across the city. Therefore, staffing at Woolston Lodge by SPCL varies on a daily basis. On the evening of our inspection a nurse and a physiotherapist were supported by two members of reception staff.
Woolston Lodge as a hub site for SPCL is located in the GP practice Woolston Lodge. This GP practice holds its own registration with CQC for providing core GP services and has been rated separately by CQC.
On the day of our inspection the extended access hub was open from 18.15 to 21.00.
How we inspected this service
During our visit we:
- Reviewed information held about this service.
- Spoke with a range of staff working on shift. We also spoke with a physiotherapist working for the registered provider.
- Reviewed provider documents and policies.
- Reviewed feedback from staff and patients as obtained from survey results and public data.
Both before and after the evening of our inspection we spoke with an additional range of staff including a range of different clinicians, receptionists, managers and members of the board that worked across locations in order to establish a wider understanding of the organisation and hub level working. We also reviewed all recruitment and training documents as part of our head office inspection undertaken on a different day.
To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we always ask the following five questions:
- Is it safe?
- Is it effective?
- Is it caring?
- Is it responsive to people’s needs?
- Is it well-led?
These questions therefore formed the framework for the areas we looked at during the inspection.