West Timperley Medical Centre

Updated 29 November 2022

West Timperley Medical Centre is located in Trafford, Greater Manchester at:

21 Dawson Road

West Timperley

Altrincham

Greater Manchester

WA14 5PF

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

The practice is situated within the Trafford locality of the Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board and delivers General Medical Services (GMS) to a patient population of approximately 9500 patients. This is part of a contract held with NHS England.

The practice is part of a wider network of GP practices in the Trafford South area involving five other GP practices and a patient population of around 40,000 patients.

Information published by Public Health England shows that deprivation within the practice population group is in the highest decile which is ten. The higher the decile, the least deprived the practice population is relative to others.

According to the latest available data, the ethnic make-up of the practice area is 88% white British, 7% Asian, 4% Other.

There is a team of six GP partners who provide cover at the practice. They are supported by a nursing team that includes two advanced nurse practitioners, three practice nurses and a health care assistant who is also an inhouse phlebotomist. They also have the support of four clinical pharmacists employed by the Primary Care Network. The practice is also involved in the education and training of the junior doctors and medical students. All junior staff work under the close guidance of the GP team.

The GPs are supported at the practice by a team of reception/administration staff. There is a practice manager with oversight of the day to day running of the practice and a business manager who supports them.

The practice is open between 8am and 6pm Monday to Friday and offers a range a range of appointment types including book on the day, telephone consultations and advance appointments.

The local Primary Care Network deliver increased evening and weekend appointments for the patients of all five practices. From 1 October 2022, the number of pre-bookable and routine appointments available have been doubled and a phlebotomy clinic is also offered on a Sunday morning. Appointments include cervical screening, childhood vaccination clinics and health checks.

Out of hours services are provided by Mastercall.

Updated 29 November 2022

We carried out an announced inspection and site visit at West Timperley Medical Centre on 31 October 2022. Overall, the practice is rated as Good.

Safe - Good

Effective - Good

Caring - Good (rating awarded at the inspection 19 December 2015)

Responsive – Good (rating awarded at the inspection 19 December 2015)

Well-led - Good

The practice was also rated Good at our previous inspection on 19 December 2015 and outstanding for the well led key question. At this inspection, we found that those areas previously regarded as outstanding practice were now embedded throughout the majority of GP practices. While the provider had maintained this good practice, the threshold to achieve an outstanding rating had not been reached.

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

Why we carried out this inspection/review

We undertook this inspection as part of a selection of services rated good and outstanding who have not been inspected for five years or more.

How we carried out the inspection/review

Throughout the pandemic CQC has continued to regulate and respond to risk. However, taking into account the circumstances arising as a result of the pandemic, and in order to reduce risk, we have conducted our inspections differently.

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site. This was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements.

This included

• Conducting staff interviews using video conferencing
• Completing clinical searches on the practice’s patient records system and discussing findings with the provider
• Reviewing patient records to identify issues and clarify actions taken by the provider
• Requesting evidence from the provider
• Feedback from staff using questionnaires
• A short site visit

Our findings

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

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

We have rated this practice as Good overall.

We found that:

• The practice cared for patients in a way that kept them safe and protected them from avoidable harm, this included safeguarding and management of risk.
• Patients received effective care and treatment that met their needs.
• Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care.
• The practice adjusted how it delivered services to meet the needs of patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. Patients could access care and treatment in a timely way.
• The way the practice was led and managed promoted the delivery of high-quality, person-centre care.

We saw areas of outstanding practice. These included:

• West Timperley Medical Centre were committed to ensuring they delivered safe and effective care. They encouraged all staff to undertake quality improvement work and the management and clinical team worked together to develop searches and identify potential cohorts of patients who may require extra care. One of the biggest areas recently developed was the heart failure work. Their new practice nurse had a clinical interest in heart failure. When they joined the practice they developed a new protocol of care for those patients and this was reviewed by the partners and they were given protected time each week to carry out this work. All the heart failure patients had now been reviewed and received an individual care plan which explained their risks and enabled them to contact the practice nurse whenever they may be deteriorating.
• They had identified that the systems in place for patient access could be better and were working with the NHS England Development team to see if there were better ways of working. They had already carried out interviews with different groups of staff and were considering alternatives to AskMyGp to review the efficacy of their appointment system.

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

• Continue to work with patients to encourage the uptake of cervical screening.
• Check that all patients with hypothyroidism are receiving appropriate monitoring.
• Review historically retained tasks in the document system to ensure none have been missed.
• Continue with the plan to complete summarising of outstanding patient records.
• Remove and mitigate the risk of blinds in the practice with pull chords as discussed.

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 Hospitals and Interim Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services