Higham Ferrers Surgery

Updated 8 April 2022

Higham Ferrers Surgery is located at 14 Saffron Road, Higham Ferrers, Rushden, Northamptonshire, NN10 8ED. The surgery has good transport links and there is a pharmacy located nearby.

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

Higham Ferrers Surgery is part of the Northamptonshire CCG and provides services to 5897 patients under the terms of a general medical services (GMS) contract. This is a contract between general practices and NHS England for delivering services to the local community.

The practice’s clinical team is led by two GP partners (one male and one female), who are supported by one long term salaried female GP and two GP registrars. The practice also has one practice nurse, one advanced nursing practitioner (both female). The practice has a female health care assistant (HCA). The practice manager is supported by an assistant practice manager and a team of administrative staff.

The practice opening hours are Monday to Friday 8am until 6.30pm. Consultation times are between 9am and 12noon and then again between 3pm and 6pm each weekday. When the practice is closed, patients can attend a local walk-in urgent care service, open each day 8am until 8pm or contact the out-of-hours provided for emergencies by NHS 111.

Standard appointments are 10 minutes long and patients are able to book appointments and order prescriptions online. Home visits are available for patients whose health condition prevents them from attending the surgery. Due to the enhanced infection prevention and control measures put in place since the pandemic and in line with the national guidance, most GP appointments were telephone consultations.

The practice profile includes a higher than average number of patients with a long-term health condition than the local and national average and lower than average numbers of patients who are unemployed. The practice has comparable levels of patients over the age of 65 compared to local and national averages. The National General Practice Profile states that 3.8% of the practice population identify as part of Black, Minority, Ethnic (BME) population groups.

Information published by Public Health England, rates the level of deprivation within the practice population group as nine, on a scale of one to ten. Level one represents the highest levels of deprivation and level ten the lowest.

Updated 8 April 2022

We carried out an announced inspection at Higham Ferrers Surgery on 22 March 2022. Overall, the practice is rated as Good.

The key questions are rated as:

Safe - Good

Effective - Good

Caring - Good

Responsive - Good

Well-led - Good

Following our previous inspection on 29 June 2021, the practice was rated Good overall and Good for providing Effective, Caring, Responsive and Well-led services. The practice was rated as Requires Improvement for providing Safe services.

From the inspection on 29 June 2021, the practice was told they must:

• Ensure care and treatment is provided in a safe way to patients.

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

Why we carried out this inspection

This inspection was a focused follow-up inspection to follow up on the Requires Improvement rating at the last inspection in June 2021. The practice was found to be in breach of Regulation 12 of the Health & Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. A requirement notice was issued to the provider under Regulation 12: Safe Care and Treatment due to the area of non-compliance we found.

In June 2021, we rated the practice as Requires Improvement for providing safe services because:

• The provider did not have a safe system in place to ensure that MHRA and other medicine safety alerts received into the practice were seen and acted upon by relevant clinicians.

We also told the practice they should:

• Review asthma and diabetes patients in order that they have appropriate and timely reviews of their care and treatment at the practice.

How we carried out the inspection:

Throughout the pandemic CQC has continued to regulate and respond to risk. However, taking into account the circumstances arising as a result of the pandemic, and in order to reduce risk, we have conducted our inspections differently.

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to avoid an on-site visit. This was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements.

This included:

• Completing clinical searches on the practice’s patient records system and discussing findings with the provider
• Reviewing patient records to identify issues and clarify actions taken by the provider

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 have rated this practice as Good overall

We found that:

• Improvements had been made to the management of safety alerts. Searches conducted found appropriate action had been taken to support safe and appropriate medicines management.
• Improvements had been made to systems and processes to ensure timely review of patients with asthma and diabetes. Information provided by the practice demonstrated all patients had been invited for a review. Unverified data shared by the provider showed that 99% of patients with asthma had received a review in the 12 months prior to this inspection.

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