Archived: Lawson Street Health Centre

Updated 29 July 2022

The provider of this service is Hartlepool and Stockton Health Limited, which is a federation serving the needs of the population of the Hartlepool and Stockton area. The Federation is made up of 33 general practices, with a population of about 300,000, spanning seven Primary Care Networks (PCNs) in the Tees Valley Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). Further details can be found on the provider’s website at www.hartlepoolandstocktonhealth.co.uk.

This service was set up in 2020 to provide face-to-face healthcare appointments for patients in the local area who had either tested positive for or had symptoms that indicated infection with COVID-19. They are known as Covid Care Clinics in the local area. Services of this type are also known as hot-sites or hot-hubs. They provide a patient pathway that minimises any potential COVID-19 transmission and to separate people who are potentially infectious from other people seeking healthcare. However, patients attending these sites may have any clinical condition requiring face-to-face assessments.

They also provide the local COVID-19 ‘Oximetry@home’ service. This service supports people at home who have been diagnosed with coronavirus and are most at risk of becoming seriously unwell.

At the time of the site visit, the need for these services to continue was being reviewed by commissioners in light of the evolution of the Governments approach to managing the pandemic.

This service provides in-hours health care across two sites:

• Lawson Street Health Centre, Health Centre, Lawson Street, Stockton-on-tees, TS18 1HU
• One Life Hartlepool, Park Road, Hartlepool, Cleveland, TS24 7PW

As part of this inspection we visited the Lawson Street Health Centre site, as well as the administrative base at:

• Hartlepool and Stockton Health Ltd, 21 Gloucester House, 72 Church Road, Stockton-on-Tees TS18 1TW

We did not visit One Life Hartlepool during this inspection but reviewed documentation relating to the premises and service delivery.

The clinical sites are located in existing health care accommodation used by other regulated GP practices and hospital services. The federation employs their own staff.

The service is delivered by a multiskilled clinical team including nine GPs (seven male and two female) and seven practice nurses (all female). They are supported by an administrative team comprising of 11 receptionists. The service is led by Hartlepool & Stockton Health leadership team including both clinical and operational expertise. The team support both the COVID Care Clinics and ‘Oximetry@home’.

The services operate at both sites as follows:

• Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm.

Patients can access appointments via the NHS 111 service or their own GP practice; they can arrange face to face appointments. The service for patients requiring urgent medical care outside of these and the GP surgery hours is provided by the NHS 111 service.

Updated 29 July 2022

This service is rated as Outstanding overall.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Outstanding

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Outstanding

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Lawson Street Health Centre as part of our inspection programme. This was the first time we had inspected this service.

We looked at the key questions is the service safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led.

How we carried out the inspection

Throughout the pandemic CQC has continued to regulate and respond to risk. However, taking into account the circumstances arising as a result of the pandemic, and in order to reduce risk, we have conducted our inspections differently.

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site. This was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements.

This included:

• Conducting staff interviews.
• Reviewing patient records to identify issues and clarify actions taken by the provider.
• Requesting evidence from the provider.
• A short site visit.

Our finding

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 provider as Outstanding overall. We rated the service as outstanding overall because:

• The provider was at the forefront of innovation and worked with partners to effectively meet the needs of their local community. Leaders were proactive in identifying and tackling challenges to the provision of good quality care. The provider demonstrated exceptional partnership working and spearheaded new approaches to tackle emerging risks to people’s health at a time of national emergency. The service had been one of the first of four areas to participate in the ‘Oximetry@home’ pilot, which was then rolled out nationally.
• The provider’s approach to service delivery had integration at the heart of any service development. We saw evidence of how the service worked in coordination with others and demonstrated agility to meet the needs of the local population. We found the service was delivered very effectively in partnership, during a time when there was much uncertainty internationally about how the pandemic would develop and how the health economy could react to safeguard patients from COVID-19, particularly those who were most clinically vulnerable.
• Leaders worked in partnership and developed relationships across other organisations to ensure services were joined up and there were open discussions on how to work well together to meet the needs of the local community. They demonstrated proactive leadership in supporting multi-agency learning and improvement. This led to change and improvement.
• There was a clear vision and strategy to deliver high quality, sustainable care which met the needs of the local community. The service culture was clearly to innovate to support this. We found leaders had a clear focus on building a positive, patient safety culture within the organisation.

At this inspection we also found:

• The service had good systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When they did happen, the service learned from them and improved their processes.
• The service routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care they provided. They ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence- based guidelines.
• Staff involved and treated people with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• Patients were able to access care and treatment from the service within an appropriate timescale for their needs.
• There was a strong focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP

Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care