A CHADDERTON medical practice has been placed in special measures and is under threat of closure if it does not improve in the next six months.

This follows a Care Quality Commission inspection which deemed Dr Anita Sharma’s practice at Chadderton South Health Centre in Eaves Lane, to be “inadequate overall”.

The CQC’s chief inspector of primary and medical services and integrated care Dr Rosie Benneyworth’s report said: “If insufficient improvements have been made such that there remains a rating of inadequate for any population group, key question or overall, we will take action in line with our enforcement procedures to begin the process of preventing the provider from operating the service.

“This will lead to cancelling their registration or to varying the terms of their registration within six months if they do not improve.

“The service will be kept under review and if needed could be escalated to urgent enforcement action.

“Where necessary, another inspection will be conducted within a further six months, and if there is not enough improvement we will move to close the service by adopting our proposal to remove this location or cancel the provider’s registration.”

The practice was judged to be inadequate in three areas of assessment – safety, effectiveness and its leadership. In the responsiveness category, it requires improvement.

In the inspection on June 14, the only category it received a “good” rating in was quality of care, as staff treated patients with “kindness, respect and compassion”.

“Feedback from patients was usually positive about the way staff treated people,” it said. “Staff helped patients to be involved in decisions about care and treatment.”

However, in the category of safety, not all staff had been trained in safeguarding adults and children and the practice did not carry out the required checks prior to recruiting new staff. There was no evidence of ongoing checks.

This had not been actioned following a requirement (to improve) notice issued after the March, 2018 inspection.

Not all staff were trained in fire safety and the recently-completed infection control checklist had incorrectly stated all staff were trained in hand hygiene and Hepatitis B vaccinations were up to date for all clinical staff.

Some guidance documents for staff gave incomplete or incorrect information.

The practice was ineffective with Dr Benneyworth saying there was no evidence of an induction programme for some staff and the induction for other staff was not well monitored. This also had not been actioned following a prior requirement notice in March, 2018.

Mandatory training by the practice, including safeguarding and General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) had not been completed by all staff. Training was not monitored to ensure it was updated in line with the practice’s policies.

There was also no assurance that long-term locum GPs had received appropriate training.

Staff appraisals had been recently carried out, but there was no evidence that an appraiser had been involved in the process.

The practice’s responsiveness “requires improvement” because its complaints policy contained incorrect information and the complaints flow-chart included information from Scotland.

Responses to complaints did not contain information about how the complaint could be escalated if the complainant was not satisfied.

Learning needs identified following complaints were not monitored and inspectors saw that a training need had been identified in June, 2018, but not all staff had received training by the inspection of June this year.

Leadership of the practice was judged to be “inadequate” because regulation breaches in the “well-led” domain at the March, 2018 inspection had not been actioned or had been repeated.

“Leaders could not show that they had the capacity or skills to deliver high quality, sustainable care,” the report said.

“While the practice had a vision, that vision was not supported by a credible strategy.

“The practice culture did not effectively support high quality sustainable care.

“Overall governance arrangements had not improved since the last inspection.”

It said that the practice did not always act on appropriate and accurate information and added: “We did not see evidence of systems and processes for learning, continuous improvement and innovation going forward.”

The Oldham Times has contacted the practice for comment and Dr Sharma has agreed to respond to the report on Thursday (August 22).