Background to this inspection
Updated
12 March 2020
Princess Park Medical Centre is situated in Walderslade, Chatham, Kent within a purpose built medical centre.
Princes Park Medical Centre is located at:
Dove Close,
Walderslade,
Chatham,
Kent,
ME5 7TD.
The local clinical commissioning group (CCG) is the NHS Medway CCG. Princes Park Medical Centre is registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide the following regulated activities:
•treatment of disease, disorder or injury
•diagnostic and screening procedures
•maternity and midwifery services
•surgical procedures
•family planning
The practice has approximately 3,277 registered patients.
Princes Park Medical Centre consists of a GP provider who provides two clinical sessions a month and a salaried GP who provides eight clinical sessions a week. There is a full time advanced nurse practitioner and a part time practice nurse. There is a team of managers including a practice manager and assistant manager. The head of Princes Park Medical Centre is a manager from Medway Community Healthcare, who provides managerial support to the practice management team. There is a team of administrative and reception staff.
There are higher than average number of patients under the age of 18 when compared with national and local averages. There is a lower proportion of patients over the age of 65, when compared with the national average. Information published by Public Health England (PHE) rates the level of deprivation within the practice population group as 6, on a scale of one to ten. Level 10 represents the lowest levels of deprivation and level one the highest. A higher proportion of patients are unemployed compared to the national average and there is a higher proportion of patients living with a long term condition. Life expectancy is similar to the national average for both men and women.
The practice is open Monday-Friday 8.30am-6.00pm. Outside of these hours support is available through the out of hours NHS 111 service.
The practice does not have a website.
Updated
12 March 2020
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Princes Park Medical Centre on 10 January 2020 as part of our inspection programme. This was the practices first rated inspection since the provider registered with CQC in February 2019.
This inspection looked at the following key questions:
- Safe
- Effective
- Caring
- Responsive
- Well-led
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 requires improvement overall and requires improvement for safe, responsive and well-led and for all the population groups. We have rated them as good for effective and caring.
We found that:
- The systems and processes to keep patients safe required improvement. For example, the practice did not have an effective system for monitoring patients on high risk medicines and there were gaps in recruitment checks for some staff.
- The provider of this service had been in operation since February 2019, a few weeks prior to the end of the published QOF year. There was an action plan to address areas of poor performance that had been implemented since November 2019.
- The uptake for cervical screening and childhood immunisations for one year olds were below average.
- Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect. However, patient satisfaction was below average, and the practice did not have a clear plan of action on how to improve this.
- The process for dealing with complaints did not include clear records of investigation, learning and improvement.
- The governance systems for the safe and effective management of services required improvement.
The areas where the provider must make improvements are:
- Ensure that care and treatment is provided in a safe way.
- Establish effective systems and processes to ensure good governance in accordance with the fundamental standards of care.
- Ensure recruitment procedures are established and operated effectively to ensure only fit and proper persons are employed.
The provider should:
- Review and improve the uptake of cervical screening and the childhood immunisation programme.
- Continue to take action to improve cancer care reviews.
- Review and continue to monitor the effectiveness of quality improvement activities, with a view to improving processes.
- Update the whistleblowing policy in line with NHS guidance and identify a Freedom to Speak Up Guardian.
- Continue to work towards establishing an effective patient participation group.
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
Working age people (including those recently retired and students)
Updated
12 March 2020
People experiencing poor mental health (including people with dementia)
Updated
12 March 2020