Huddersfield GP surgery rated Inadequate and placed into special measures by the CQC

England’s Chief Inspector of General Practice has rated Dr Hafiz Rehman (Thornton Lodge Surgery), in Huddersfield as Inadequate, and placed the practice into special measures following an inspection by the CQC in February.

CQC carried out a focussed inspection of the provider in January to follow up issues around safe care that had been identified at an earlier comprehensive inspection in December 2015. During the course of the focussed inspection a number of new concerns were identified. As a result, CQC returned to complete a comprehensive inspection of the practice in February.

The practice was rated as Inadequate for being safe, effective and well-led, and Good for caring and responsive.  Overall the practice is rated as Inadequate.

Alison Holbourn, Deputy Chief Inspector of General Practice at CQC said:

“We found that people registered with Dr Hafiz Rehman are not getting the high quality care which everyone should expect to receive from their GP.

“When we last visited for a routine follow up inspection in January, we found fresh concerns which prompted us to carry out a full comprehensive inspection.

“This practice had previously been rated as Good overall, but requiring improvement for providing safe services, but we found a lack of progress on improvements we had asked them to make, and were concerned about people using this service.

“There were no health and safety assessments on the physical environment of the surgery, one clinician did not have the right insurance for the sessions they undertook, and investigations into incidents were not thorough with lessons learnt not being communicated widely enough to improve safety.

“We have told the practice where they must improve and are placing them into special measures to ensure that action will be taken to improve the quality of care for patients.”

A full report of this inspection has been published on the CQC website at: http://www.cqc.org.uk/location/1-497451343.       

Some of the areas where CQC have told the practice they must improve:

• Action must be taken to address identified concerns with health and safety across the practice.
• The practice must improve the processes for acting on and monitoring significant events, incidents and near misses.
• Staff must be provided with appropriate policies and guidance to carry out their roles in a safe and effective manner.

The service will be kept under review and if needed could be escalated to urgent enforcement action. Where necessary, another inspection will be conducted within a further six months, and if there is not enough improvement we will move to close the service by adopting our proposal to remove this location or cancel the provider’s registration.

Patients registered with the practices being placed into special measures should be aware that a package of support is offered by NHS England and the Royal College of GPs to ensure that there are no immediate risks to patient safety at these GP practices whilst improvements are being made.