Archived: Rawson Road Surgery Also known as SSP Health Ltd

Updated 10 September 2015

Rawson Road Practice is located in a residential area of Seaforth which is in a deprived area of Merseyside. There were 2360 patients registered at the practice at the time of our inspection and the majority were white British.

The practice has one male salaried GP who works two days a week, a practice nurse, a healthcare assistant, and a practice manager and reception and administration staff. The practice also has locum GPs.

The practice is open 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday. The practice offers early morning appointments every Tuesday from 7.30am with the practice nurse or healthcare assistant. Patients requiring a GP appointment outside of normal opening hours are advised to contact an external out of hours service provider (GTD Healthcare). Rawson Road has a General Medical Services contract (GMS). In addition the practice carried out a variety of other enhanced services such as shingles vaccinations.

Updated 10 September 2015

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

This is the report from our announced comprehensive inspection of Rawson Road practice on the 27July 2015.

Overall the practice is rated as good.

Our key findings were as follows:

• Feedback from patients and observations throughout our inspection highlighted the staff were kind, caring and helpful. Survey information reviewed demonstrated a high level of patient satisfaction in being able to get through to the practice by telephone and make an appointment but not necessarily with their preferred GP as the practice did use locum GPs for three days a week.

• There were systems in place to mitigate safety risks including analysing significant events and safeguarding. The practice was clean and tidy. The practice used a pharmacy advisor to ensure the practice was prescribing in line with current guidelines.

• A Local Medical Director had been recently appointed to oversee the clinical governance of the practice and was proactively encouraging the use of clinical audits to ensure patients received treatment in line with best practice standards.

• Patients had their needs assessed in line with current guidance and the practice had a holistic approach to patient care.

There are improvements the practice should make:

• Have a named GP and their contact details readily available for the locum GPs if they needed to discuss patient care when the main GP was not present.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

Updated 10 September 2015

The practice continuously contacted these patients to attend annual reviews to check that their health and medication needs were being met. The practice had adopted a holistic approach to patient care rather than making separate appointments for each medical condition. The practice offered appointments with the practice nurse for up to 45 minutes to ensure patients with multiple needs were seen.

Updated 10 September 2015

The midwife and health visitor attended the practice alternate weeks and there were immunisation clinics. The practice had an ‘early years’ fact sheet to provide information including such issues as immunisations. The practice had developed an ‘Access for Children’ policy to ensure that all children under five could be seen on the same day if required.

Updated 10 September 2015

The practice offered proactive, personalised care to meet the needs of the older people in its population and had a range of enhanced services, for example, the avoidance of unplanned admissions scheme. All patients who were identified on this service had completed care plans in place. The practice carried out home visits and also visited care homes in the area. The practice had a phlebotomy service and 24 hour blood pressure monitoring service onsite for convenience.

Updated 10 September 2015

The needs of this group had been identified and the practice had adjusted the services it offered to ensure these were accessible, flexible and offered continuity of care. For example the practice offered telephone consultations instead of patients having to attend the practice. The practice offered online prescription ordering and online appointment services. It also offered extended opening hours for practice nurse and healthcare assistant appointments in the morning one day a week for those patients who could not access the practice during normal working hours.

Updated 10 September 2015

The practice referred patients to the appropriate services. The practice maintained a register of patients with mental health problems in order to regularly review their needs or care plans. The practice liaised with other healthcare professionals to help engage these patients to ensure they attended reviews either at the practice or within the community setting.

Mental Capacity Act training was available to all staff and SSP Health Ltd had also disseminated information regarding Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards to all its practices. Staff had received conflict resolution and suicide awareness training.

Updated 10 September 2015

Staff knew patients and their families well and arranged appointments to suit patients’ needs. The practice used a system of placing alerts on patients’ records to highlight if they were carers. Staff were aware of their responsibilities regarding information sharing, documentation of safeguarding concerns and how to contact relevant agencies. The practice worked with the local alcohol and drug recovery team. There was a dedicated carer’s noticeboard in the waiting room with information for patients about local support groups.