White Horse Health Centre ‘thrilled’ with ‘Good’ rating

Following a turbulent 2016 for health care in Westbury, the White Horse Health Centre is celebrating success having been rated ‘Good’ by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

The new year has started positively for the White Horse Health Centre which in recent months has been under scrutiny over healthcare concerns in Westbury. But following an inspection by the healthcare watchdog CQC in December, the White Horse Health Centre has been praised for its service.

The health centre  received ‘Good’ – the second highest score – in all five of the main assessment categories. The CQC deemed that the practice provided safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led services to its patients.

GP Dr Debbie Beale said, “The last 12 months have seen a great deal of change at the Westbury Group Practice. The arrival of Smallbrook surgery into our group as well as new appointment and telephone systems have all served to keep us incredibly busy. We also continued to experience difficulties in recruiting clinical staff; in particular it is hard to find new doctors. Our patients will be aware that there has been criticism of the surgery in the local press regarding the new appointment system specifically.

“Despite these challenges I was absolutely thrilled to learn that we had earned a ‘Good’ CQC rating for both the White Horse Health Centre and Smallbrook surgery.  Although we achieved an overall ‘Good’ rating, we did achieve an ‘Outstanding’ rating for our work relating to the ‘older people’ population group. This is a great platform which we will consolidate on and from which we will continue to make improvements to the service we provide.

“The early challenges of the new appointment and telephone system have slowly been ironed-out; we are now seeing over 1,000 patients a week who have been seen within one week of their original request for an appointment. However, we are acutely aware that we need to continuously seek to improve. I am also pleased to announce that we have recently recruited a highly experienced paramedic practitioner who will help with managing our on-the-day requests for urgent care.

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those whose hard work and effort ensured that our inspection went well and produced such a terrific outcome. These include; those patients from both the Smallbrook and White Horse patient groups who were involved on the day, all the staff at the surgery and finally the management team led by Mark Dickson.”

You can read the full report by visiting www.cqc.org.uk/location/1-2345668580