Tottington Medical Practice

Updated 30 November 2023

The registered provider is Tower Family Healthcare. The location we inspected was Tottington Medical Practice located in Bury, Lancashire at:

16 Market Street

Bury

Lancashire

BL8 4AD

The practice has 3 branch surgeries at:

Greenmount

9 Brandlesholme Road
Greenmount
Bury
BL8 4DR

Spring Lane

15-17 Spring Lane
Radcliffe
Manchester
M26 2TQ

Minden

3rd Floor
Moorgate Primary Care Centre
22 Derby Way
Bury
BL9 0NJ

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. These are delivered from all sites.

The practice offers services from the main site and from the branch surgeries. Patients can access services at all sites.

The practice is situated within the Bury Integrated Care Board and delivers a Personal Medical Services contract to a patient population of about 49,000 people. This is part of a contract held with NHS England.

The practice is part of the Horizon Primary Care Network which is a wider network of GP practices.

Information published by Office for Health Improvement and Disparities shows that deprivation within the practice population group is in the seventh lowest decile (7 of 10). The lower the decile, the more deprived the practice population is relative to others.

According to the latest available data sourced from NHS England, NHS Digital, Public Health England and the NHS Business Services Authority, the ethnic make-up of the practice area is 2% Asian, 96% white and 2% mixed.

The age distribution of the practice population closely mirrors the local and national averages.

There is a team of 36 GPs, 20 partners GPs and 16 salaried GPs. There is a team of clinical and non-clinical staff who provide cover at all sites. This includes advanced clinical practitioners, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, paramedics, GP assistants, a communications manager, a compliments and complaints manager, and a health and safety manager etc.

There is a board of directors and a senior management team which includes a communications manager, an HR manager, a finance manager, a governance manager, a non-clinical services implementation manager and a nursing manager.

There are site coordinators at each branch that are managed by the non-clinical services manager.

The practice is open between 8am and 6.30pm Monday to Friday. The practice offers a range of appointment types including book on the day, telephone consultations and advance appointments.

Extended access is provided locally by the GP Federation, where late evening and weekend appointments are available. Out of hours services are provided by Bury and Rochdale Doctors on Call (BARDOC).

Updated 30 November 2023

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Tottington Medical Practice (a location managed by Tower Family Healthcare) on 30 August 2023. Overall, the practice is rated as requires improvement.

Safe - requires improvement

Effective - requires improvement

Caring - good

Responsive - requires improvement

Well-led - requires improvement

During the inspection process, the practice highlighted efforts they are making to improve outcomes for their patient population. The effect of these efforts is not yet reflected in verified outcomes data. However, the provider was continuing to take steps to improve access, by the use of a capacity tracker. We saw that the practice was monitoring closely telephone performance data and had worked to recruit more GPs and non-clinical support staff. As such, the ratings for this inspection has not been impacted. However, we continue to monitor the data and where we see potential changes, we will follow these up with the practice.

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

Why we carried out this inspection

We carried out this inspection in line with our inspection priorities.

How we carried out the inspection

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 to Tottington Medical Practice. (The 3 branch surgeries were not visited at this inspection)

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:

• Staff had received appropriate training and there were effective health and safety risk assessments.
• Patients received effective care and treatment that met their needs. However, we identified some areas that required improvement such as effective medicine review and monitoring of patients with long term conditions and those on high-risk medicines.
• The provider had achieved higher than the international target in childhood vaccinations for children at 1 year of age and met minimum national targets across the remaining childhood vaccinations.
• Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care.
• Patients could not consistently access the provider via telephone in a timely way which was reflected in the latest results of the National Patient Survey.
• The provider had developed a clear vision for the management of the practice, and the staff team felt supported in their development and described a positive working culture.

We found a breach of regulations. The provider must:

• Establish effective systems and processes to ensure good governance in accordance with the fundamental standards of care.

We also found that the provider should:

• Improve the management of safety alerts to ensure patient safety.
• Improve the way clinical searches are completed to ensure potential risks to patient care are identified and managed.
• Continue to monitor and improve cervical screening rates.
• Continue with efforts to seek and act on patient feedback and embed learning to improve the patient experience.

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 Health Care