Background to this inspection
Updated
23 July 2021
Hove Medical Centre is located at West Way, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 8LD. The service is provided in a purpose-built premise across two floors. It provides services to approximately 9,100 patients under the terms of a general medical services (GMS) contract.
The provider is registered with CQC to deliver the Regulated Activities; diagnostic and screening procedures, surgical procedures, maternity and midwifery services, family planning and treatment of disease, disorder or injury.
The practice has five GP partners and one salaried GP (male and female). The practice employs a female nurse practitioner, four female nurses and two female healthcare assistants. There is a practice business manager, deputy managers and a range of reception and administrative staff. The practice is a training practice for GP registrars (qualified doctors who are undergoing further specialist GP training), medical and nursing students, paramedics, pharmacists and physician associates.
There are higher than average number of patients over the age of 65 and a higher than average number of patients aged under 18 than the local and similar to the national average. Information published by Public Health England, rates the level of deprivation within the practice population group as five, on a scale of one to ten. Level one represents the highest levels of deprivation and level ten the lowest. Male life expectancy is 79 years compared to the national average of 79 years. Female life expectancy is 84 years compared to the national average of 83 years.
Updated
23 July 2021
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection of Hove Medical Centre on 27 March 2019. We identified a breach of regulation 12 (Safe care and treatment) of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 and issued a requirement notice. The service was rated as requires improvement for providing safe services. It was rated as good overall and good for providing effective, caring, responsive and well led services. All the population groups were rated good.
We carried out this inspection of Hove Medical Centre to confirm that the service now met the legal requirements of the regulation and to ensure enough improvements had been made.
As a result of this inspection, the service is now rated as good overall and good for providing safe services.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic CQC has continued to regulate and respond to risk. However, considering 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 spend a minimum amount of time on site. This was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements.
This included:
- Speaking with staff in person.
- Requesting documentary evidence from the provider.
- A short site visit.
We carried out an announced site visit to the service on 24 June 2021. Prior to our visit we requested documentary evidence electronically from the provider.
At the last inspection in March 2019, we rated the practice as requires improvement for providing safe services because:
- The practice had not done all that was practicable to mitigate risks to the health and safety of service users receiving care and treatment. In particular, ensuring safety alerts had been acted on and risk assessing the availability of certain emergency medicines.
We also identified areas where the provider should make improvements. They were:
- Continue to work to improve areas of patient satisfaction with feeling listened to and treated with care and concern.
- Review how significant events are recorded, including the amount of detail, to ensure that enough information is collated to support the review of events and the identification of trends.
At this inspection we saw that the practice had made enough improvements, which included:
- The implementation of a web-based platform that shared and tracked the dissemination of safety alerts to staff and ensured there was a clear audit trail of actions taken.
- An up to date risk assessment that determined the range of emergency medicines held.
- An upward trend in patient satisfaction with feeling listened to and being treated with care and concern as demonstrated by the latest GP national patient survey results (March 2020).
- An improved system for recording significant events which ensured that enough detail was recorded.
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