A DOCTOR'S medical practice in Ashton has been taken out of special measures after receiving an overall "good" rating.

This is less than a year after Dr Samir Sadik's Dunkerley Street practice - also known as Waterloo medical Centre - was deemed "inadequate" rating by the Care Quality Commission.

It was visited by the CQC on August 28 and received a "good" score in four out of five categories of assessment - safety, standard of care, responsiveness and leadership.

However, it was deemed to "require improvement" for its effectiveness.

The inspection was one of a number of follow-up to a visits by the CQC to one in January which resulted in the practice being judged to be inadequate in areas of safety and leadership and being placed into special measures.. Although then the caring and responsiveness was "good", it was told it needed to improve by April 30.

The CQC visited the practice again on May 9 to check that warning notices had been complied with and improvements were fond to have been made.

It said: "We have now rated this practice as good overall, with safe, caring and responsive and well led also good."

The CQC found that the practice provided care in a way that kept patients safe and protected them from avoidable harm.

"Patients received effective care and treatment that met their needs," it said. "However, systems to ensure care and treatment for those with long term conditions was not robust."

Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respected and involved them in decisions about their care.

The practice organised and delivered services to meet patients' needs, the report said, with patients able to access care and treatment in a timely way.

"The way the practice was led and managed promoted the delivery of high quality personal-centred care," it said.

The practice had been working closely with the Oldham Clinical Commissioning Group and the Royal College of General Practitioners to assist it in making improvements across the board following the previous CQC inspection.

It was rated as "requires improvement" for effectiveness because there was "limited monitoring of the outcomes for patients with long-term conditions".

Quality Outcomes Framework data was significantly below local and national averages for patients with long-term conditions.

But Dr Sadik's practice was told it MUST establish effective systems and processes to ensure good governance in accordance with the fundamental standards of care.

And it was told it SHOULD make improvements in the review of data for childhood immunisations and look to implement systems to achieve targets; review data relating to cancer indicators and look to implement systems to improve screening uptake; monitor quality improvement work to bring NASIDs prescribing in line with good practice and implement plans to develop a practice website.

As a result of the improvements made the practice has been re-rated and removed from special measures.