URGENT overall improvement is needed after a fifth IMH-managed Swindon surgery received a damning CQC report.

The GP practice in Abbey Meads Village Centre has been placed into special measures after inspectors found significant issues with patient safety, service quality, leadership and governance.

The newly-Inadequate-rated practice did not have clear systems in place to keep patients safe or managing medicines safely.

Management were unable to show that staff had the skills, knowledge and experience to carry out their roles.

The practice was not always acting on accurate information to keep people safe or make improvements when things went wrong.

Last week, the Adver published the full list of GP surgery patient ratings for Swindon and Abbey Meads did not fare well.

Click the picture below to see how your doctors surgery got on 

Swindon Advertiser:

Deputy chief inspector of general practice for the south of England Ruth Rankine said: “While it is good to see that staff are still providing a caring service at Abbey Meads Village Centre, there needs to be an urgent overall improvement within the practice for the sake of its patients.

"Clearly there are areas which we found unsafe particularly around the management medicines.

“As a result of these concerns we have placed urgent conditions upon the provider Better Health Partnership, a subsidiary of IMH Ltd, for all of the services currently being run in Swindon.

"I have also recommended the practice to be placed into special measures, so the practice receives the support it needs to improve.

“We will continue to monitor progress and we will inspect again within six months to check whether sufficient improvements have been made.

"The practice needs to do what is required for the sake of their patients but if we find that the service remains inadequate, we will not hesitate to take further enforcement action even if that leads to cancelling its registration.”