• Doctor
  • GP practice

Sunderland GP Alliance - Special Allocation Scheme

Overall: Good read more about inspection ratings

Primary Care Services Pallion Health Centre, Hylton Road, Sunderland, Tyne And Wear, SR4 7XF 07478 893136

Provided and run by:
Sunderland GP Alliance Limited

Latest inspection summary

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Background to this inspection

Updated 7 May 2019

Sunderland GP Alliance – Disruptive Patient Service is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to provide primary care services. They provide care and treatment to currently 28 patients under a special allocation scheme, who have been removed from mainstream practice lists, as their behaviour posed a risk to general practice staff and patients. Patients are allocated for an initial 12 month period, and may be then returned to mainstream practice on successful completion of a risk review process. Patients must be over the age of 18. This practice is part of Sunderland clinical commissioning group (CCG) and operates on an Alternative Provider Medical Services (APMS) contract agreement for general practice.

The practice provides services from the Primary Care Services Pallion Health Centre, Hylton Road, Sunderland, SR4 7XF. It is managed from the Health Centre, The Galleries, Washington Centre, Washington, NE38 7NQ. We visited this address for the follow up inspection.

The practice is located in a purpose built property and provides services to patients on the ground floor. All patient access to the practice is via a dedicated secure entrance.

Patients can book appointments by telephone between 8am and 6pm Monday to Friday.

Pre-bookable appointments with a GP are available at the following times:

•Monday to Friday 12:30pm and 2pm

Attendance at appointments is subject to availability of appropriate security staff and police according to the patient’s risk assessment. Patients can generally get an appointment the same day. Patients requiring urgent care "outside of core service hours" could be seen as an emergency patient in Accident and Emergency Department.  If patients contact NHS 111 their records are flagging that they are registered with the Disruptive Patient Service, the appropriate lone worker risk assessments are implemented.  Patients were asked if they had caring responsibilities and were given the opportunity for feedback through patient surveys and an exit interview.

The service is provided by one male GP with one other who operates a buddy system in times of absence. There is also a named lead nurse with a buddy, and named management and administrative staff. The GPs are based at practices that are part of the Sunderland GP Alliance network. All other staff are based at The Galleries Health Centre, and follow standardised policies and procedures from this practice.

The provider, Sunderland GP Alliance is a collaboration of GP practices in Sunderland. The Board of Directors are elected by the Member GP Practices on a four year term, and are responsible for directing the company’s operations on the shareholders’ behalf. All the directors must be a Partner of a Member GP Practice.

Overall inspection

Good

Updated 7 May 2019

This practice is rated as Good overall. (Previous rating March 2018 – Good)

The key questions at this inspection are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

We carried out an announced focused inspection at Sunderland GP Alliance – Disruptive Patient Service on 3 April 2019. This was to follow up on breaches of regulations within the safe domain.

At the previous inspection on 20 March 2018 we found that the practice had not always carried out appropriate recruitment and training checks on staff who were used on an occasional ad hoc basis from a different provider within the same building. We also found that safety incidents were not always documented and acted on in a timely fashion.

At this inspection we found:

Breaches of regulations and recommendations made at the last comprehensive inspection had been acted on.

  • The practice had clear systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When incidents did happen, the practice learned from them and improved their processes.
  • The practice now had effective systems in place to ensure that when staff were recruited appropriate checks were carried out.
  • Appropriate systems were followed for staff training; including for chaperoning.

We saw one area of outstanding practice:

  • The provider produced a quarterly safety newsletter across it’s sites which detailed incident types, numbers and learning points, along with a reminder to staff of how to report and where to access learning points. Reductions in quarterly incidents were reported and staff encouraged to make a conscious effort to further improve safety and report incidents. Therefore good practice from the main provider was mirrored in the systems within this offshoot service.

Details of our findings and the evidence supporting our ratings are set out in the evidence tables.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP

Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care