Updated 26 October 2018
Staffordshire House is part of the Vocare Group, recently acquired by Totally Plc. This service provides a GP led Out of Hours (OOH) service, known locally as Staffordshire Doctors Urgent Care (SDUC) and provides a service for a population of approximately 1,200,000 patients in Staffordshire. SDUC also provides the 24 hour NHS 111 service across the whole of Staffordshire commissioned under a separate contract to the OOH service (and registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) as a separate location). Vocare have approximately 2,000 employees and deliver GP OOH and urgent care services to approximately 9.2 million patients nationally. The population of Staffordshire includes the more deprived urban areas in and around Stoke-on-Trent as well as the more affluent areas in south Staffordshire with pockets of deprivation around Cannock, Tamworth and Burton upon Trent. The GP led OOH service is accessed through NHS 111, providing telephone triage and face-to-face consultations 24 hours a day to patients across Staffordshire. This service is based at the organisation’s headquarters at Staffordshire House, in Stoke-on-Trent. Staffordshire House provides OOH care between 6.30pm and 8am Monday to Friday. At weekends and bank holidays (b/h) the service provides 24 hour access. As part of the OOH service there are seven OOH sites which open at varying times and days; the locations are:
- County Hospital, Stafford (6.30pm to 8am, peripatetic site with Cannock)
- Cannock Chase Hospital (6.30pm to midnight week days, 8am to midnight weekends and bank holidays)
- Robert Peel Hospital, Tamworth (7.30pm to 11.30pm week days, 9am to 11pm weekends and bank holidays)
- Queen’s Hospital, Burton-on-Trent (6.30pm to 8am week days, 24 hours weekends and bank holidays)
- Staffordshire House (6pm to midnight week days, 8am to midnight weekend and bank holidays)
- Haywood Hospital, (6pm to midnight week days, 8am to midnight weekend and bank holidays)
- Royal Stoke Hospital (24 hour opening every day of the year)
The peripatetic model allows clinicians to be moved around the centres dependent on demand.
During our inspection we visited the headquarters in Stoke-on-Trent along with the OOH sites at Staffordshire House and at Robert Peel Hospital, Tamworth.
The service received approximately 128,000 contacts in 2017. On average, approximately half of these contacts are referred by the NHS 111 service (the service receives 900 referrals per week via NHS 111). Of these an average of approximately 40% are received on weekdays and 60% of contacts are made at weekends. The other pathways into the service are from accident and emergency (A&E), walk in centres, a direct healthcare professional telephone line, minor injuries and patients’ own GPs.
Further details can be found by accessing the provider’s website at www.sduc.nhs.uk