Brookvale Practice

Updated 28 March 2024

Brookvale Practice is located in Runcorn at:

Hallwood Health Centre
Hospital Way
Runcorn
WA7 2UT

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

The practice is situated within the Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care System (ICS) and delivers Personal Medical Services (PMS) to a patient population of about 9,060. This is part of a contract held with NHS England. The practice is part of a wider network of GP practices.

Information published by Office for Health Improvement and Disparities shows that deprivation within the practice population group is in the second lowest decile (two of 10). The lower the decile, the more deprived the practice population is relative to others.

According to the latest available data, the ethnic make-up of the practice area is 97.6 % White, 1.4% Mixed, 0.7% Asian, 0.2% Black, 0.1% Other

The age distribution of the practice population closely mirrors the local and national averages.

There is a team of 5 GP partners, 4 salaried GPs, an advanced nurse practitioner (ANP), 2 practice nurses, a clinical pharmacist and 2 healthcare assistants. Clinicians are supported at the practice by a practice manager and a team of reception/administration staff, including 2 GP assistants. Additional staff are deployed via the PCN to support patients and include, a social prescriber, mental health practitioner, clinical pharmacist and a pharmacy technician.

The practice is open:-

Monday – 8.30am - 6.45pm

Tuesday – 7am – 6.30pm

Wednesday – 7am – 7pm

Thursday – 7am – 6.30pm

Friday – 8.30am – 6.30pm

The practice offers a range of appointment types including book on the day, telephone consultations and advance appointments.

Extended access is provided at the practice and locally by Halton GP Extra, where late evening and weekend appointments are available. Out of hours services are provided by Urgent Care 24.

Updated 28 March 2024

We carried out an announced comprehensive at Brookvale Practice on 20 and 28 November 2023. Overall, the practice is rated as good.

Safe - good

Effective - good

Caring - good

Responsive - requires improvement

Well-led - good

Following our previous inspection on 08 September 2015, the practice was rated outstanding overall and for the effective, caring and responsive key questions and good for the safe and well-led key questions. At the last inspection we rated the practice as outstanding for providing effective, caring and responsive services because of the range of strategies that were in place to promote patient health and well-being.

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 in a number of areas, the threshold to achieve an outstanding rating had not been reached. The practice is therefore now rated good for providing safe, effective, caring and well-led services. The provider is rated as requires improvement for responsive services due to the low satisfaction patients had with access to the service as indicated in the National GP Patient Survey.

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

Why we carried out this inspection

We carried out this inspection in line with CQC methodology as the practice had not been inspected since 2015.

How we carried out the inspection

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site.

This included:

• Conducting staff interviews using video conferencing.
• Completing clinical searches on the practice’s patient records system (this was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements).
• Reviewing patient records to identify issues and clarify actions taken by the provider.
• Requesting evidence from the provider.
• 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 found that:

• Safe practices were in operation in a number of areas including staff recruitment, the maintenance of the premises and infection prevention and control.
• The provider worked with external professionals to support the health and welfare of patients.
• The provider had acted on patient feedback to improve patient’s experiences of using the service.
• Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care.
• The way the practice was led and managed promoted the delivery of high-quality, person-centre care.

We found elements of outstanding practice:-

• The provider proactively identified patients with health conditions so that these patients could access care and treatment and actively promoted health screening and flu vaccination to encourage uptake.

We rated the practice as requires improvement for providing responsive services because:-

• Although, the provider was monitoring access to appointments and had made changes to improve access. At present the National GP Patient Survey data did not indicate that these changes had been effective.

We also found that the provider should:

• Make a record of the emergency medication risk assessment so that it can be easily reviewed.
• Take action to review and improve the processes for monitoring of high-risk medicines and advising patients promptly about patient safety alerts.
• Record the monitoring undertaken of the referrals and consultations of staff employed in advanced clinical practice.
• Take action to improve the oversight of staff involved in long term condition monitoring.
• Improve the protocol for the management of hypertension to demonstrate the remit of different levels of staff involved in monitoring and review.
• Continue to monitor and improve the uptake of cervical screening and childhood immunisations.
• Take action to improve patient satisfaction in relation to access by phone and the appointment system.

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