Hailsham doctors' surgery rated '˜Good' in latest CQC report

A doctors' surgery in Hailsham has been rated '˜Good' overall in its latest CQC report.
Seaforth Farm Surgery in HailshamSeaforth Farm Surgery in Hailsham
Seaforth Farm Surgery in Hailsham

Seaforth Farm Surgery, in Vicarage Lane, received the rating after an inspection in February.

This comes after a previous inspection in November last year found it required improvement, and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) instructed the practise to make various changes.

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This time the CQC found it rated ‘Good’ in its safe, effective, caring and responsive sections but ‘Requires improvement’ in its well-led section.

The report’s findings show Seaforth Farm Surgery had made a number of improvements, including staff training, telephone answering to patients, and recruitment records.

According to the CQC, areas it still needs to improve include putting a system in place to monitor the quality of the services provided – which includes establishing a way to taking account of patients’ views.

The report said it saw evidence the practice had started to establish such a system to take into account the views of patients but it was not yet in place.

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It also recommended that the surgery should continue to monitor the current telephone and appointment access arrangements and take the ‘necessary steps’ to improve access for patients if required.

Seaforth Farm Surgery is among the 80 reports released this week by the CQC on the quality of care provided by GP practices that have been inspected by specialist teams of inspectors.

Under CQC’s new programme of inspections, all of England’s GP practices are being given a rating according to whether they are safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led.

Professor Steve Field, Chief Inspector of General Practice, said, “After reporting on nearly 7,000 inspections, we have found that most care is good – with more than 300 practices now rated Outstanding.

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“What’s enormously encouraging is that our inspections are driving improvement – 90 per cent of practices that we have re-inspected have improved. Through their hard work and dedication, practices are making positive changes to the care they deliver.

“However, we still see evidence of too much poor care. Since we began inspecting GP practices in October 2014, we have found more than 200 practices to be Inadequate.

“While this is a minority, it still amounts to over half a million patients in England who were not receiving the basic standards of care that they should be able to expect from their GP practice.

“I am glad to say that we have increasingly found that most practices that are placed in special measures use the support that is on offer to meet those standards.”

Full reports on all 80 inspections are available at: www.cqc.org.uk/content/cqc-inspectors-highlight-outstanding-and-good-care-reports-are-published-80-more-gp-0