Blackford House Medical Centre

Updated 10 January 2024

Blackford House Medical Centre is located in Hollin, Bury, BL9 8QA.

The provider is registered with CQC to deliver the Regulated Activities of diagnostic and screening procedures; maternity and midwifery services; treatment of disease, disorder or injury; and surgical procedures.

The practice is situated within the Bury Integrated Care Partnership and delivers a General Medical Services contract (GMS) to a patient population of about 7820 patients. This is part of a contract held with NHS England. The practice is part of the Whitefield Primary Care Network (PCN).

Information published by Office for Health Improvement and Disparities shows that deprivation within the practice population group is in on the 7th decile (7 of 10). The lower the decile, the more deprived the practice population is relative to others. The practice population according to the latest available data, the ethnic make-up of the practice area is 90.2% white, 6.5% Asian and the remaining 2.3% Black, Mixed, and Other.

The practice is open between 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday. The practice offers a range of appointment types including book on the day, telephone consultations and advance appointments.

Extended access is provided locally at three neighbouring medical and health centres, where late evening and weekend appointments are available. Out of hours services are provided by Bury and Rochdale Doctors on call service or a GP service held at Fairfield General Hospital, Bury.

Updated 10 January 2024

We carried out a targeted assessment of Blackford House Medical Centre in relation to the responsive key question. This assessment was carried out on 27 November 2023 without a site visit. The rating for the responsive key question is Good. As the other domains were not reviewed during this assessment, the rating of good will be carried forward from the previous inspection and the overall rating of the service will remain Good.

Safe – ‘not inspected, rating of good carried forward from previous inspection’.

Effective – ‘not inspected, rating of good carried forward from previous inspection’.

Caring – ‘not inspected, rating of good carried forward from previous inspection’.

Responsive – Good

Well-led – ‘not inspected, rating of good carried forward from previous inspection’.

The full reports for previous inspections can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Blackford House Medical Centre on our website at www.cqc.org.uk

Why we carried out this assessment.

We carried out this assessment as part of our work to understand how practices are working to try to meet demand for access and to better understand the experiences of people who use services and providers.

We recognise the work that GP practices have been engaged in to continue to provide safe, quality care to the people they serve. We know colleagues are doing this while demand for general practice remains exceptionally high, with more appointments being provided than ever. In this challenging context, access to general practice remains a concern for people. Our strategy makes a commitment to deliver regulation driven by people’s needs and experiences of care. These assessments of the responsive key question include looking at what practices are doing innovatively to improve patient access to primary care and sharing this information to drive improvement.

How we carried out the assessment

This assessment was carried out remotely.

This included:

• Conducting staff interviews using video conferencing.
• Requesting evidence from the provider and reviewing the appointment system.
• Speaking with a member of the patient participation group

Our findings

We based our judgement of the quality of care at this service on a combination of:

• what we found when we carried out the assessment
• information from our ongoing monitoring of data about services and
• information from the provider, patients, the public and other organisations.

We found that:

• The practice understood the needs of its local population.
• Patients could access care and treatment in a timely way and the provider had implemented systems and processes as a result of patient feedback to further improvements.
• The practice worked with their patients and Patient Participation Group to identify where they might improve.
• Patients were satisfied with the access to appointments offered by the practice. This was reflected in the National GP survey and local practice surveys.
• The practice dealt with complaints in a timely manner and learned from them.

Whilst we found no breaches of regulations, the provider should:

• Continue to take action to improve access for patients.

Details of our findings and the evidence supporting our ratings are set out in the evidence tables.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Health Care