Archived: Care UK - South West London

Care UK – South West London is a GP Out of Hours service covering 127 GP practices for NHS patients in the Merton, Kingston, Richmond and Wandsworth areas. The service is commissioned by the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG) for each of the areas. The service has an office in Putney and seven bases for patients to attend booked appointments during evenings and weekends and four cars so GPs can provide home visits where necessary. We inspected the regulated activities of transport, triage and medical advice provided remotely and treatment of disease, disorder and injury during this inspection.

Before our visit we spoke with the CCG, NHS England and Healthwatch. We spoke with four patients, 14 members of staff including GPs, the clinical lead, medical director, training lead and registered manager during the visit. We looked at a range of records including staff recruitment and training, health and safety, infection control, clinical audits, serious untoward incidents, complaints and policy documents. We checked medicines.

We found the service provided a safe service to patients with systems in place to review safety information, incidents and complaints and the provider shared this with staff and used it to improve the services provided. Medicines were appropriately stored, regular checks were made to ensure medicines were used before their expiry date. Emergency medicines and equipment was available to GPs. Staff recruitment was in line with provider’s requirement procedures, staff had access to the training, support and supervision they needed to carry out their role. Arrangements were in place for all staff to have an annual appraisal. The service ensured GPs provided effective care to patients by keeping GPs up to date with changes to good practice guidelines and standards. They worked with other health and social care services to ensure patients received joined up care and treatment and provided a caring service to patients. Staff had access to translators if required, maintained patients privacy and dignity and involved patients and their relatives or representatives in decision making. Patients made positive comments about the care and treatment they received. The service was responsive to patients through the provision of bookable appointments at seven bases across the area and home visits to patients when this was required. The provider responded to complaints and used the process to review and improve services when required. The service was well-led. There was a clear vision and systems for managing risks, audit, training and learning ensured the service provided high quality out of hours care and promoted good outcomes for patients.