Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Corby Urgent Care Centre on 9 March 2017. Overall the centre is rated as good.

Our key findings across all the areas we inspected were as follows:

• There was an open and transparent approach to safety and an effective system in place for reporting and recording significant events. However there was room for improvement in relation to dissemination of learning from incidents.
• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed and the practice sought to continually improve processes, including through escalation processes.
• Staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence based guidance. Staff had been trained to provide them with the skills, knowledge and experience to deliver effective care and treatment.
• Information about services and how to complain was available and easy to understand. Improvements were made to the quality of care as a result of complaints and concerns.
• The centre had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• There was a clear leadership structure and staff felt supported by management. The provider proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on.
• The provider was aware of and complied with the requirements of the duty of candour.
• Clinicians sort patient’s views and involved them in decisions about their care. This meant patients had input into their condition management plans as a strategy to help empower them to improve their health.
• There was a focus on continuous learning and improvement. This included through multidisciplinary working to provide staff with emergency care training and with a local ambulance service to ensure appropriate patient access.
• Clinical staff had access to a digital ‘app’ that enabled them to see the demand on the centre and current staffing levels at any time. This meant staff could offer to provide extra cover during times of exceptional demand.

There was an area where the provider should make improvements:

• The centre should implement a system to ensure all staff are made aware of learning from significant events.

There was an area of outstanding practice:

• In the 12 months prior to our inspection, the centre achieved a 94% avoidance in hospital admissions, this was due to effective use of the Manchester triage scores.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

We spoke with 12 people who used the service. They all spoke positively about their experiences with the service. One patient told us, “The nurse was nice and very thorough. She took the time to explain and I didn’t feel at all hurried. She told us that if my child became very unwell to tell someone straight away.”

We saw that care and treatment were planned and delivered in a way that met people’s needs with a clear process for prioritising the order people were seen. One person who had been to the urgent care centre before told us, “They make it clear that there may be other people who need to be seen before you. Last time we saw a doctor almost straightaway.”

We saw that the provider had systems in place to ensure cooperative working with other services. This included planning for situations where the centre became extremely busy and also when people needed to be transferred to hospital.

Staff received training in safeguarding (protecting vulnerable adults and children). They were aware of the appropriate agencies to refer any concerns to. The service had policies and procedures in place to identify and respond to safeguarding concerns.

There were established systems in place to assess and monitor the quality of service that people received. This included clinical audits and patient satisfaction surveys.