A GP SURGERY where patients are "not always safe" has been slammed by health watchdogs.

The Highlands Practice has been rated 'requires improvement' by the CQC in its most recent inspection.

Four out of five categories assessed by the CQC were rated as 'requires improvement' at the Fareham service.

Inspectors found that the Highlands Road surgery was unsafe, ineffective, unresponsive to people's needs, and poorly led.

One category - caring - was rated 'good'.

Since its merger in October 2021, the practice is now based across three sites with one main location and two branch sites.

Highlands Practice is the main site, with Jubilee Surgery in Titchfield and Whiteley Surgery as branch sites.

Inspectors found that patients were "not always kept safe" and identified high-risk medicine monitoring, unclear medicine review records, and safety alert issues.

The report said not all patients with long-term conditions, specifically asthma, chronic kidney disease and hypothyroidism, had received the required monitoring in line with national guidance.

Inspectors found that employees at the surgery were not receiving appropriate support, training, professional development, supervision and appraisal.

Inspectors said that the surgery was "unable to demonstrate" monitoring of patients prescribed high-risk medicines were being carried out consistently when prescribing.

They also found evidence that the process for managing safety alerts was not being followed appropriately.

Inspectors said that the practice adjusted how it delivered services to meet the needs of patients during the pandemic.

However, patients "could not always access care and treatment in a timely way".

The inspectors did note that staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care.

The CQC has said Highlands practice must ensure care and treatment is provided in a safe way to patients, all staff must receive the appropriate support, training, supervision and appraisal, and it must establish effective systems.

Dr Paul Howden, CQC Registered Manager at Sovereign Health Partnership, said:

“We accept the findings of our most recent CQC report and would like to reassure patients that we are addressing the concerns raised by the inspectors. We have already been working alongside our patients to look at how we improve our service. This further detail from the CQC is welcome, alongside patient feedback, to help inform our improvement programme going forward.

“We have now introduced new and improved processes for medicines monitoring and management and addressed all care that was identified as overdue by the inspection. We are pleased to have recently been able to engage new locum GPs to offer more appointments and we’ve recruited a patient experience coordinator to help improve outcomes for patients.

“In September this year alone we saw 7,321 patients across 14,798 appointments. Despite the fantastic efforts of our teams to work hard to meet increasing demand, we know that some patients are not always getting the care they would like.

“We are determined to improve this and will continue to do everything we can, acting on feedback from our patients, partners and regulators to offer the best possible care to our community.

“I’d like to thank all our staff for their hard work and professionalism during what is a challenging time for us all. It was great to see them recognised in the report as ‘good’ for ‘caring’.”

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