A SURGERY in Saltburn has been rated inadequate after a report carried out by the CQC (Care Quality Commission).

Woodside Surgery in Loftus scored inadequate in the areas of, safe, effective and well-led and requires improvement in the areas of, caring and responsive.

The inspection was carried out between September 24 and October 18, at a previous inspection the practice was rated inadequate, placed into special measures and warning notices in relation to safe care and treatment and good governance were issued.

Within the report the CQC said: "We found the practice’s system for managing patient and drug safety alerts did not ensure medicines were prescribed safely. We found the practice had not properly actioned any of the four safety alerts we reviewed, which affected at least 48 patients. There was no evidence to show the practice had taken action to protect all of those patients from avoidable harm.

"The practice did not evidence a safe system to ensure patients on high risk medicines were appropriately managed in a timely way. We reviewed seven high risk medicines and found that five were not appropriately managed, affecting at least 27 patients.

"The practice did not fully evidence that patients had a structured and comprehensive medicine review. We identified reviews had been coded on the clinical system but there was no evidence in the clinical records of a structured medicine review or consultation with the patient. We reviewed patient consultation records and found discrepancies with the coding of medical records.

"We reviewed the practice’s system for managing pathology results and found that there was not an effective system to ensure urgent abnormal results were always reviewed and acted on in a timely way.

"The policy and procedures for recruiting new members of staff to the practice were ineffective. This had been subject to a requirement notice from the previous inspection in October 2019.

"The practice failed to evidence patients’ needs were adequately assessed. We found care and treatment was not always delivered in line with current legislation, standards and evidence-based guidance."

A spokesperson for Woodside Surgery said: “The clinicians and staff of Woodside Surgery are very disappointed about the recent CQC rating and the issues highlighted in their report.

“We would like to reassure all our patients that we are committed to providing high standards of care and are therefore eager to address all the concerns that have been raised, and that we are being supported in this by key partners such as The Royal College of GPs Special Measures Team, Health Education England, our GP Federation, NHS Tees Valley Clinical Commissioning Group and colleagues from local practices.”