Updated 16 June 2022
SGPA Bunnyhill Primary Care Centre is registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide NHS Out of Hours services. The service provides an extended GP access service from Bunnyhill Centre, Hylton Lane, Sunderland.
The provider of this service is Sunderland GP Alliance which is a federation of all 38 practices in the Sunderland clinical commissioning group area. The provider has five extended access services which are registered separately with CQC. These are all run as one service from five locations and staff work across them all. We inspected the other four services in 2020, this service was not inspected at that time as it was still in the process of being registered with the commission. The administrative records for all of the services are held at Borough Road, Sunderland, SR1 2HJ, which we visited as part of this inspection.
Bunnyhill Primary Care Centre is situated in dedicated accommodation with facilities managed by NHS Property services. The building is owned by the local authority. We visited this site as part of this inspection.
There was disabled parking and access, and all services were on the ground floor. There was a car park close by.
The service directly employs some of the managers and administrators in the service. Most of the staff who work there are employed by the GP practices who are part of the federation and are employed as sessional staff. The service rarely used locum staff.
The service provides extended GP access appointments via;
- The patients’ registered GP.
- NHS 111 service.
The service is led by GPs. There are advanced nurse practitioners working in the service (who are all medical prescribers), practice nurses and health care assistants. There was always a hub manager on duty who worked across all of the five locations when the service was open. The service was provided:
- Monday – Friday 6pm – 8.30pm.
- Saturday & Sunday 9am - 5.30pm.
- Bank holidays 10am – 2pm.
During the hours above the provider can offer additional services, such as, heart disease monitoring, cervical cytology and blood pressure monitoring. Some of these services had stopped during the pandemic. The provider was in the process of re-introducing these services. COVID vaccinations could also be administered from this location when the clinics were required.
The service for patients requiring urgent medical care outside of these and the GP surgery hours is provided by the NHS 111 service.