The Park Medical Group

Updated 11 January 2023

The Park Medical Group is located in Newcastle Upon Tyne at:

• Fawdon Park Road, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE3 2PE

The practice has a branch surgery at:

• Kingston Park Avenue, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE3 2HB

We visited both of these sites as part of the inspection.

The provider is registered with CQC to deliver the Regulated Activities; diagnostic and screening procedures; family planning; maternity and midwifery services; treatment of disease, disorder or injury; and, surgical procedures.

The practice offers services from both a main practice and a branch surgery. Patients can access services at either surgery.

The practice is situated within the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB) area and delivers General Medical Services (GMS) to a patient population of about 13,000. This is part of a contract held with NHS England.

The practice is part of a wider network of GP practices as part of the North Gosforth Primary Care Network (along with Brunton Park Health Centre, Broadway Medical Centre, Regent Medical Centre, Gosforth Memorial Medical Centre).

Information published by Public Health England shows that deprivation within the practice population group is in the fifth most decile. The lower the decile, the more deprived the practice population is relative to others. According to the latest available data, the ethnic make-up of the practice area is 5.7% Asian, 88.8% White 1.3% Black, 1.2% Mixed, and 3% Other.

There is a team of 8 GPs (2 male and 6 female) who provide cover at both practices. There are also 2 advanced nurse practitioners (both female) and a nurse practitioner (female), who carry out a triage service. The practice has a team of 4 nurses who provide nurse led clinic’s for long-term condition at both the main and the branch locations, alongside a health care assistant and a trainee nurse associate. The GPs are supported at the practice by a team of reception/administration staff.

The practice manager is based at the branch surgery and the practice operations manager and the patient services manager are based at the main location to provide managerial oversight.

There is an extended urgent care service with access to a GP across the Newcastle area, with provision in emergency departments, walk-in centres and urgent care treatment centres. Patients can see GPs from 8am to 10pm Monday to Sunday, 365 days of the year. These appointments are a mix between walk-in appointments and re-referral from 111 and emergency departments.

Out of hours services are provided by Vocare Limited accessed via the 111 service.

Updated 11 January 2023

We carried out an announced focused inspection at The Park Medical Group on 2 and 7 December 2022. Overall, the practice is rated good.

Safe - Good
Effective - Good
Caring - not inspected, rating of good carried forward from previous inspection.
Responsive - not inspected, rating of good carried forward from previous inspection.
Well-led - Good

Following our previous inspection on 24 and 29 November 2021, the practice was rated requires improvement overall and for the key questions, was the practice safe, effective and well led. The key questions, was the practice responsive and caring, were both rated as good.

The full reports for previous inspections can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for The Park Medical Group on our website at www.cqc.org.uk

Why we carried out this inspection

We carried out this inspection to follow up concerns and breaches of regulation from a previous inspection.

The focus of the inspection was the key questions:

• Safe
• Effective
• Well led
• Also, the breaches of Regulation 17 HSCA (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 – Good Governance and Regulation 12 HSCA (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 Safe care and treatment.
• We also followed up on the areas where we said they should make improvements in the previous inspection.

How we carried out the inspection/review

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site.

This included:

• Conducting staff interviews using video conferencing.
• Completing clinical searches on the practice’s patient records system (this was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements).
• Reviewing patient records to identify issues and clarify actions taken by the provider.
• Requesting evidence from the provider.
• A short site visit.
• Sending questionnaires to staff working in the practice.

Our findings

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 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.
• The way the practice was led and managed promoted the delivery of high-quality, person-centre care.
• The practice had acted upon the areas identified in the previous CQC inspection report and made good progress. The practice had used this as a driver for improvement.

Whilst we found no breaches of regulations, the provider should:

• Maintain a full record of staff vaccination status in line with current UK Health Security Agency guidance.
• Improve the monitoring of blank prescriptions stored at the branch surgery, to support identification if any were lost or stolen.
• Continue with identified improvements to the monitoring of patients prescribed lithium.
• Put in place formal risk management arrangements.

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

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Hospitals and Interim Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services