• Doctor
  • Urgent care service or mobile doctor

Archived: Coastal Healthcare - Morecambe Same Day Health Centre

Overall: Good read more about inspection ratings

1 Hannover Street, Morecambe, Lancashire, LA3 1DA (01524) 518620

Provided and run by:
Coastal Health Care Limited

Important: The provider of this service changed. See new profile

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Background to this inspection

Updated 11 December 2014

Coastal Health Care, Morecambe Same Day Health Centre (MSDHC) is registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide urgent care consultations to patients in the local area. The service is commissioned by the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) to provide ‘on the day’ GP services across the whole of the population of the local CCG. The practice provides a service from 8am -8pm seven days per week.

MSDHC are registered with the CQC to deliver the following regulated activities; treatment for disease, disorder and injury and diagnostic and screening services.

The service was originally commissioned to provide an 8am-6.30pm seven day a week service due to a reduced number of GP’s available in the local area which is indicated by the Indices of Multiple Deprivation (2010) to be amongst the fifth most disadvantaged area of the country.

The service was successful in achieving a Prime Ministers Challenge bid that has resulted in extended opening hours to 8am-8pm seven days a week and to also offer radiology services to patients. The service has GP appointments available Monday to Friday 10am-6pm and nurse appointments available at all times when the service is open. Appointments are available with either the GP or nurses dependant on need. The weekend service is nurse led with a GP available for telephone advice. All appointments are 15 minutes in duration.

Patients can access the service via the 111 telephone service or via their own GP practice who hold a number of ‘on the day’ appointments for their patients. Each GP practice had the option to divert 1% of their minor illness patients per day to the service. This allows GPs to have more time for in-depth appointments for their chronic disease management patients. In total this means the service offer 69 urgent appointments for minor illness to the GP practices on a daily basis. The service also offer ‘walk in’ appointments to patients who sustain minor injuries or present with chest pains and also accepted Category C patients from the North West Ambulance Service (NWAS). Category C patients are those presenting conditions which are not immediately serious or life threatening. Every fourth appointment during the day is left vacant to accommodate emergency ‘walk in’ or ambulance patients attending the service.

The service is based in a large single storey building shared with other services including GP and Out of Hours (OOHs) services. They have appropriate access for patients with limited mobility. There are radiology facilities available at the service.

The service currently has four directors overseeing the service, senior management team; a team of eight GP’s working a variety of hours and three senior Advanced Nurse Practitioners. Working alongside these staff members are eight emergency or unscheduled care nurses and eight health care support workers all are supported by a small administration team. The service has access to four clinic rooms, one treatment room and one GP consulting room.

Overall inspection

Good

Updated 11 December 2014

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice.

We inspected Coastal Health Care Morecambe Same Day Health Centre on 15th October 2014. We carried out a comprehensive inspection of this service under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

We inspected this service as part of our new comprehensive inspection programme. This provider had not been inspected before and that was why we included them.

We rated the service as Good across all five domains.

Our key findings were as follows:

  • Access to the service was effective and appropriate.
  • There was a clear management structure to support and guide staff to deliver safe, responsive and effective care to patients.
  • Patients told us they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in care and treatment decisions
  • The practice was clean and well maintained.

However, there were also areas of practice where the provider needs to make improvements. 

The provider should:

  • Ensure there is a process in place with the wider health economy for example other GP practices to secure appropriate access to summary care records.
  • Ensure there is a formal governance arrangement in place to allow staff to follow patients through pathways.
  • Ensure there is an auditable system for reviewing and monitoring the recording of serial numbers on blank prescription pads held in storage and once allocated to GPs.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice