A DOCTORS’ surgery has been praised for its improvements, but the care watchdog said more work is needed.

Andover Health Centre, in Charlton Road, was rated ‘good’ by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) following a visit in February, having been told it ‘requires improvement’ last year.

According to the report, published last month, the 13,900-patient practice was ‘effective’, with those in its care being treated with kindness, respect and compassion.

Patients were also helped to be involved in decisions about care and treatment.

The practice was also seen to be organised and delivered services to meet patients’ needs

The CQC did say while the centre had processes in place to keep people safe from abuse, the practice’s policies to support these were not fully embedded, with a lack of details on staff training and guidance to protect vulnerable adults.

But the centre did say that staff had received appropriate and relevant safeguarding training in the last three years.

Following its last visit when it was found that a patient was not contacted about an abnormal urine sample and by the time they were told the patient had been admitted to hospital, a new ‘buddy system’ has been implemented for the monitoring of test results.

The report added: “The practice confirmed all inboxes were checked each day and reviewed by a buddy clinician. If action was to be required, this would be taken and reported to the clinician on their next return to work.”

The practice was praised by the watchdog for the appropriate and safe use of medicines, but it found a lack of monitoring led to a wealth of illegal immunisations given.

The CQC added that one of the centre’s Patient Group Directive (PGD) — a legal framework for registered health professionals supply and or administer specified medicines to a certain group — was unsigned and unauthorised.

And there were 87 immunisations administered without the correct legal authority.

The report said: “Since inspection, the practice has told us all practice nurses had signed the identified PGD. However, no trace of the signed authorisation has been found.”

All affected patients have also been notified of the incident.

The practice had not formalised its repeat prescribing process, but inspectors were shown that is was “appropriately monitoring repeat prescriptions requests and patients’ prescriptions waiting to be collected were being reviewed every four months.”

The CQC noted the practice had also learned and made improvements when things went wrong, as last time it said that learning from incidents and complaints were not widely shared, but it has now “confirmed all significant events and near miss incidents were being recorded on a centralised system”.

Patients’ needs were assessed, and care and treatment was delivered in line with current legislation, and it was effective in dealing with all population groups noted by the CQC. But the watchdog said work needed to improve “the identification of carers to enable this group of patients to access the care and support they need”.

The practice was able to demonstrate staff had the skills, knowledge and experience to carry out their roles although a formal induction process was not fully embedded and annual updates for recommended training were not consistently completed.

A spokesperson for West Hampshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) said: “The CCG are delighted that Andover Health Centre have improved their overall Care Quality Commission (CQC) rating to ‘good’.

“This reflects all the hard work and improvements put in place since the last inspection. The CCG quality team have supported the practice with a number of quality improvement visits and facilitated learning from specific events. The CCG will continue to support the practice to improve its processes and systems for recruitment and immunisations, as highlighted by the CQC.”