Improvement to GP practices to be driven by special measures

GP practices that are currently providing inadequate care are to be provided with deadlines to improve or face potential closure, under recently proposed special measures.

The special measures will be introduced from October this year by the Care Quality Commission, coinciding with 8,000 practices being rated on whether they are outstanding, good, requiring improvement or inadequate. This will allow the CQC to provide clear requirements for improvement, including a timescale to improve by.

Where practices are rated as inadequate, they will be given six months to improve. If they fail within that timescale, they will be placed in special measures. If after a further six months, they have still failed to improve, they will have their contract terminated by NHS England and/or their registration with CQC cancelled.

If a practice has problems that are so severe that patients are considered to be at risk, then the practice will be put straight into special measures.

Professor Steve Field, Chief Executive of General Practice of the CQC, said “Most GP practices provide good care. We have confirmed this in our pilot inspections so far. But we can’t allow those that provide poor care to continue to let their patients have an inadequate service. I want to do all I can to drive up standards in those that are not providing the services people deserve. We need to have a clear framework and a process to respond to those GP practices that are providing inadequate care to ensure that they can’t continue to provide inadequate care indefinitely.”

Deputy Medical Director for NHS England Mike Bewick, said “NHS England’s vision is to see general practice play an even stronger role in the heart of local communities, offering more joined up, high quality services. As part of this, we want to help GPs to provide ever higher standards of care to patients.”

Niall Dickson, Chief Executive of the General Medical Council, said “Whenever CQC’s new inspection system raises concerns about the competency of individual GPs, the matter will be referred to the GP’s Local Responsible Officer and if necessary to the GMC. Family doctors are now subject to regular checks, but the inspections in England are bound to expose areas of weakness as well as good practice. We will work closely with CQC and Local Responsible Officers to help drive up standards.”

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Posted by Tony May, Partner/head of Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), Medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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