Archived: Doctor Care Anywhere

Updated 11 December 2017

Doctor Care Anywhere provides consultations with GPs via video conferencing. Patients pay either a subscription to the service or purchase a one-off consultation, and the service also holds contracts with large companies to provide GP consultations to their staff and with insurance companies for the benefit of their members. Patients are able to book appointments at a time to suit them and with a GP of their choice via an online portal. GPs, working remotely, conduct consultations with patients and, where appropriate, issue prescriptions or make referrals to specialists; consultation notes are available for patients to access. The service has also developed a portal which allows patients to monitor data about their health and track symptoms; this information is available to consulting GPs at the service as part of the patient’s medical record.

At the time of the inspection the provider had submitted a registered manager application, as the previous registered manager had recently left the organisation. A registered manager is a person who is registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

Why we inspected this service

We carried out a comprehensive inspection of Doctor Care Anywhere on 24 May 2017, and asked the provider to make improvements regarding their arrangements for checking patients’ identities, sharing information with patients’ registered GPs and access to patient records for patients aged 11-18 years. The service provided an action plan in respect of these issues shortly following the initial inspection.

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions in order to check that the service had followed their action plan and that the changes they had introduced following the initial inspection were effective and well-embedded. This inspection was planned to check whether the service was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

How we inspected this service

Our inspection team was led by a CQC Lead Inspector accompanied by a GP specialist advisor.

During our visits we:

• Spoke with a range of staff.
• Reviewed organisational documents.
• Reviewed a sample of patient records.

This was a follow-up inspection, focussing only on areas where the service was found to be failing to comply with regulations during the initial inspection in May 2017. This inspection looked at two of the five question we usually ask to get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment:

• Is it safe?
• Is it effective?

Updated 11 December 2017

We carried out an announced focussed inspection on 14 November 2017 to ask the service the following key questions: are services safe and effective?

Our findings were:

Are services safe?

We found that this service was providing safe care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Are services effective?

We found that this service was providing effective care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

CQC inspected the service on 24 May 2017 and asked the provider to make improvements regarding their arrangements for checking patients’ identities, sharing information with patients’ registered GPs and access to patient records for patients aged 11-18 years. We checked these areas as part of this focussed inspection and found the service had taken prompt action to put in place effective processes to address the areas identified for improvement during the previous inspection.

Doctor Care Anywhere provides consultations with GPs via online conferencing. Patients pay either a subscription to the service or purchase a one-off consultation, and the service also holds contracts with large companies to provide GP consultations to their staff and with insurance companies for the benefit of their members. Patients are able to book appointments at a time to suit them and with a GP of their choice via an online portal. GPs, working remotely, conduct consultations with patients and, where appropriate, issue prescriptions.

Our key findings were:

• The provider had effective systems in place to check the identity of patients, which included checking photographic identity documents.
• The provider had processes in place to ensure that young people, who were assessed as having capacity to make decisions about their care, could keep their medical records private from their parent/guardian. These arrangements complied with national guidance.
• The provider had processes in place to collect information about patients’ registered GPs, and encouraged patients to provide consent for information to be shared with their registered GP. In cases where patients did not provide consent, GPs would make a decision about whether it was in the best interest of the patient to provide treatment.
• The provider had introduced a system for information sharing with the GPs who worked for them, most of whom worked remotely. All GPs working for the service had access to an online platform which was used for information sharing, online discussion, and peer support. We also saw evidence of this platform being used for educational purposes, such as group discussions about case studies.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP

Chief Inspector of General Practice