Watchdog takes action to protect 15,000 people at this 'unsafe' Lancashire GP surgery

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated Adelaide Surgery - which has 15,000 people on its books - as inadequate, following inspectors visits in July and August.

The practice has a main site at Elizabeth Street, Blackpool, and two branch surgeries at Gorton Street and Kentmere Drive, also in Blackpool.

Due to the level of concerns found during CQC’s inspection, inspectors issued three warning notices to focus Adelaide Surgery’s attention on making immediate improvements regarding safe care and treatment, making sure fit and proper people are employed and good management. CQC has rated the areas of safe and well led as inadequate, and requires improvement for responsive, caring and effective.

The service has been placed in special measures which means it will be kept under close review by CQC to keep people safe and it will be monitored to check sufficient improvements have been made.

Inspectors found:

• The practice didn’t work well with people and health system partners to establish and maintain safe systems of care.
• Leaders didn’t create a positive learning culture and didn’t carry out regular staff training and appraisals to ensure high-quality care.
• Leaders didn’t ensure there were enough qualified, skilled and experienced staff available to meet people’s needs.
• Although people could make complaints, they weren’t always investigated.
• Staff couldn’t provide assurance that medicines were kept at appropriate temperatures to ensure they were effective and to avoid potentially harming people.
• The practice did not always detect and control potential risks in the care environment - with a boiler room left open and accessible from a waiting area, an office was “uncomfortably hot” and a health and safety assessment recorded for a future date.

“Disappointed”

Linda Hirst, CQC deputy director of operations in the north-west, said: “When we inspected Adelaide Surgery, we were disappointed to find a practice that wasn’t providing safe GP services to people. Our experience tells us that when a service isn’t well-led they are less likely to be able to provide good care which is what we found here. Leaders didn’t ensure there was an effective system to triage people to prioritise needs when allocating appointments which could place people at risk of harm if they had a serious issue or condition.

“Urgent referrals were usually actioned on the day they were requested, but there had been a recent backlog due to a whole staff group being absent from work at the same time. For example, some important pathology results hadn’t been actioned for over a month which could delay people’s diagnosis and treatment.

“It was positive, however, that staff understood the diverse needs of people in the local community. For example, they worked closely with asylum seekers and people living in care homes to ensure harder to reach people could access services and receive support when needed. We have told leaders where we expect to see rapid improvements and we will continue to monitor the service closely to keep people safe during this time.”

Postives:

- Recent survey results, including from the National GP Patient Survey and the NHS Friends and Family Test, showed people were mainly satisfied with services, although some responses were slightly below national averages.

- There was a new system in place to provide assurance that appropriate safeguarding actions had been taken, and outcomes were recorded.

The report will be published on CQC’s website in the next few days.