Background to this inspection
Updated
6 August 2019
Brighton Station Health Centre is a GP treatment centre offering general practitioner, sexual health and walk-in services. The GP and walk-in services are open from 8am to 8pm seven days a week. The sexual health service provides pre-bookable and walk-in appointments seven days a week from 9am to 12pm and from 3pm to 7pm.
The service is provided by Care UK (Primary Care) Limited who provide central support that includes clinical and policy guidance as well as other support functions such as clinical governance and quality assurance. There is a local medical director (24 hours) and a new services medical director (8 hours), two salaried GPs and eight self-employed GPs (male and female). There is a lead nurse practitioner (male), six bank nurse practitioners (walk-in service), two sexual health nurses and two bank sexual health nurses, one bank practice nurse and a healthcare assistant (female). There is a senior service manager and delivery service manager, administrative managers and a team of administrative and reception staff.
Services are provided from:
Aspect House, 84 – 87 Queens Road, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 3XE, and;
Boots, 129 North Street, Brighton BN1 2BE
The sexual health and walk in centre services were based at the Queens Road site and the registered patient service (known as Practice Plus) was based at the North Street site. Practice Plus included a telephone and electronic triaging service that was managed by a team of call handlers based in Dudley. Practice Assist is a GP telephone service ran by Care UK as part of their 111 services based in Southall. Patients contacting the practice via the triage app or telephone service who needed to be reviewed by a doctor would either be booked into a face to face appointment at the North Street site or they would have a telephone appointment with a GP based in Southall.
The practice is registered for four registered activities. Diagnostic and screening procedures, Family planning services, Maternity and midwifery services and also Treatment of disease, disorder or injury. The service was not registered for surgical procedures although they were providing these. The registered manager told us they believed it to be an administrative error and took action to address this at the time of inspection.
There are approximately 9,000 registered patients within the GP practice. In addition, the walk-in centre has the provision to undertake 37,000 walk in consultations per year, approximately 15% of these are for sexual health services.
The practice has a patient demographic where approximately 85% of patients are aged between 20 and 49 years. Less than 8.5% are aged between 50 and 89 years of age. Approximately 6.5% of the patient population is under 18.
More information in relation to the practice can be found on their website www.brightonstationhealthcentre.nhs.uk
Updated
6 August 2019
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Brighton Station Health Centre on 27 June 2018 as part of our inspection programme. The overall rating for the practice was requires improvement, with a requires improvement rating for effective and well led. The full comprehensive report on the June 2018 inspection can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Brighton Station Health Centre on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
This inspection was an announced comprehensive inspection carried out on 5 June 2019 to confirm that the practice had addressed the issues identified in requirement notices following the June 2018 inspection. Requirement notices had been issued against regulation 17 (good governance) and regulation 18 (staffing) of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. During the course of the planning for the inspection it was apparent that a number of changes had been made to the service so a second day of inspection was scheduled to enable the gathering of further information and evidence.
We based our judgement of the quality of care at this service on a combination of:
- what we found when we inspected
- information from our ongoing monitoring of data about services and
- information from the provider, patients, the public and other organisations.
We have rated this practice as good overall and good for all population groups.
We found that:
- The practice provided care in a way that kept patients safe and protected them from avoidable harm.
- Patients received effective care and treatment that met their needs.
- Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care.
- The practice organised and delivered services to meet patients’ needs. Patients could access care and treatment in a timely way.
- The way the practice was led and managed promoted the delivery of high-quality, person-centre care. The practice had made improvements in the governance of the service, including in relation to recording and maintaining patient multi-disciplinary care records.
- Feedback from patients about access to the service was not always positive, however the service had developed with a view to improving the patient experience. This included the development of the Practice Plus triage service.
- At our previous inspection we found that there had been insufficient staff to ensure that certain areas of care were sufficient, for example in relation to cancer screening and childhood immunisations. At this inspection we found that some improvements to staffing had been made, including more consistent medical and nursing cover. There was evidence of improvements to both cancer screening and childhood immunisations, however figures were still below average.
- At our previous inspection we found that the practice did not have an active patient participation group. At this inspection we found that a group had been developed and that patients felt listened to and able to contribute to the management of the service.
Whilst we found no breaches of regulations, the provider should:
- Continue to work to improve the uptake of cancer screening.
- Continue to work to improve the uptake of childhood immunisations.
- Maintain a record of when action in relation to safety alerts has been completed.
- Review patients in relation to those outside of the expected range of diabetes control with a view to making improvements.
- Continue to work to improve QOF exception reporting.
- Continue to work with the patient participation group to review patient satisfaction with the 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