Little Horton Medical Centre - City Health Limited

Updated 21 July 2023

Little Horton Medical Centre - City Health Limited is located at 392 Little Horton Lane

Bradford, BD5 0NX. The registered provider of the service is City Health Limited.

Little Horton Medical Centre - City Health Limited, is a not-for-profit federation, currently providing enhanced access services to 9 GP practices in the Bradford area, to a population of approximately 56,000 patients. The member practices are also members of a primary care network (PCN).

Throughout this report the service will be referred to as ‘City Health’.

The provider, City Health Limited is registered to deliver the regulated activity: Treatment of disease, disorder or injury.The provider is sub-contracted to deliver 20 hours of enhanced access appointments, within working hours to the local PCN population, to reduce health inequalities and improve access to healthcare. Services for patients are delivered from 2 locations across the district:

• Dr I M Raja & Partner, Little Horton Medical Centre - 392 Little Horton Lane, Bradford, BD5 0NX.
• Manningham Health Centre, Lumb Lane, Bradford BD8 7RT. (At the time of our inspection, Manningham Health Centre was a branch location of Clarendon Medical Centre, 5 Alice Street, Bradford, BD8 7RT.)

City Health provide specific types of contracted services from areas around inner city Bradford with some of the highest levels of deprivation in England, alongside poor morbidity and mortality. The locations were chosen to be central to the population and accessible by foot and public transport. Both locations were visited as part of this inspection.

Enhanced access appointments are available Monday to Friday and at the time of our inspection were as below:

• An acute presentation paediatric clinic for children aged 3-16 years old. Monday to Friday 3.30pm-5.30pm, 40 appointments per week delivered at Dr I M Raja & Partner.
• A phlebotomy (blood taking) clinic for patients aged 5 years old and above. Monday, 12.30pm-3.30pm at Manningham Health Centre.
• Level 1 Diabetes clinic. Thursday, 11.30am-2.30pm at Dr I M Raja & Partner.

The service website can be found at https://city-health.org

How we inspected this service

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a reduced amount of time on site.

This included:

• Conducting staff interviews using telephone and video conferencing.

• Requesting evidence from the provider.

• A shorter site visit where we spoke with staff and the provider.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we always ask the following five questions:

• Is it safe?
• Is it effective?
• Is it caring?
• Is it responsive to people’s needs?
• Is it well-led?

These questions therefore formed the framework for the areas we looked at during the inspection.

Updated 21 July 2023

We carried out an announced inspection at Little Horton Medical Centre - City Health Limited on 5 July 2023. Little Horton Medical Centre - City Health Limited registered with the Care Quality Commission in July 2019. This was the first inspection of this service and in response to a regulated activity being delivered.

This service is rated as Good overall.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

The service is contracted to provide 20 hours of enhanced access appointments for the population of 1 Primary Care Network (PCN) in the inner city area of Bradford. (A PCN is a group of practices working together to focus on local patient care). These appointments were delivered Monday to Friday within working hours. At the time of our inspection the service was delivering 16 hours of enhanced access appointments and the additional 4 hours were under review. The service has been delivered since October 2022.

The chairperson of the board is the nominated individual for the service. The nominated individual is registered with the Care Quality Commission and responsible for supervising the management of the regulated activity provided. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

Our key findings were:

• The provider had processes in place to maintain oversight of the hub services and ensure that premises and equipment were safe.
• Staff told us they enjoyed delivering their services and working for the provider. They were kept up to date with information and changes to the service.
• Leaders and staff were exceptionally knowledgeable about issues and priorities relating to the patient population. They were culturally competent and had an in-depth understanding of the challenges faced by patients, and were working to address them.
• The team was collaborative and supportive and worked closely with GP practices, the PCN, stakeholders and other like-minded services, to continually review data and patient utilisation of the clinics which were offered.
• Patient feedback showed that access to appointments was timely and met their needs. The team ensured they were responding to those with the greatest need, from deprived and marginalised communities and reducing health inequalities for patients.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Continue with plans to enhance the induction process to ensure that the documentation in place fully reflects the support and discussions which take place.
• Take steps to ensure that the quality improvement activity which takes place directly relates to, and reflects the services offered.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Health Care