Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at St Ives House (East Lancashire Medical Services Limited) on 6 March 2017. The overall rating for the practice was good, although the key question of safe was rated as requires improvement. A requirement notice was issued in relation to safe care and treatment, as the provider was found to be in breach of regulation 12 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. The full comprehensive report on the March 2017 inspection can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for St Ives House on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
This inspection was a desk-based review carried out on 6 September 2017 to confirm that the service had carried out their plan to meet the legal requirements in relation to the breach in regulations that we identified in our previous inspection on 6 March 2017. This report covers our findings in relation to those requirements and also additional improvements made since our last inspection.
Overall the service is rated as good, with the previous rating of requires improvement for the key question of safe updated to a rating of good.
Our key findings were as follows:
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The service had made improvements to how it documented mandatory training undertaken by sessional staff.
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All staff had been reminded who could undertake chaperone responsibilities, and the service’s chaperone policy had been updated to make this more explicit.
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Staff who drove as part of their role had been reminded that relevant health checks were available to them as part of their employment with the service.
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The service’s incident reporting policy had been updated to ensure it incorporated incidents being investigated following complaints.
Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)
Chief Inspector of General Practice