EVERY IMH-managed GP practice in Swindon needs urgent improvements after the private firm’s disastrous takeover sparked patient safety fears and caused service quality standards to plummet.

Abbey Meads is the last of five practices to receive a damning Care Quality Commission report since partnering with Integral Medical Holdings in September. CQC inspectors rated the surgery Inadequate after finding significant issues with patient safety, service quality, leadership and governance.

These included:

- The practice did not have clear systems in place to keep patients safe or manage medicines safely.

- Management could not 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.

- A backlog of 1,636 pieces of correspondence to the site had not been looked at - with a total of 2,627 across the five IMH sites.

-Events which caused patients’ quality of life to be affected were not properly investigated, with limited feedback from the hub when staff raised concerns.

-Patients struggled to access care and treatment in a timely way because of phone hub issues and suffered delays of up to four months in receiving treatments.

- Patients’ complaints were often left unanswered by the central hub. Staff felt stressed and ignored by managers.

The inspectors singled out care as the only aspect worthy of being rated Good at Abbey Meads as staff treated patients with kindness, respect and compassion.

This practice, along with Moredon Medical Centre, Eldene Surgery and Phoenix Surgery, used to be rated Good overall before coming under new management and they have since been placed into special measures and received Inadequate ratings.

Taw Hill Medical Centre dipped to a Requires Improvement rating after IMH took over.

In March, the practice was registered under a new provider,the IMH subsidiary known as Better Health Partnership . In May, after months of criticism and complaints, IMH withdrew from providing support services in Swindon.

Since then, the structure has still largely remained the same, with all correspondence and back office functions being managed at Moredon Medical Centre.

The CQC took the rare step of placing urgent conditions upon the Better Health Partnership provider so that it cannot ignore the regulatory group’s instructions.

A spokesman for the Swindon Clinical Commissioning Group said: “The management of Abbey Meads Medical Practice, as well as that of the other practices in Swindon previously involved with the IMH Group, was something that created a concern for the Care Quality Commission, which is now reflected in this latest rating.

“This was shared by the CCG and was ultimately one of the catalysts for the decision to call time on IMH’s involvement with primary care in Swindon. Since then, the CCG has been spending time with staff at Abbey Meads, as well as the four other Swindon practices, to ensure that issues identified by the CQC are understood and being addressed.

“The CCG is now working to identify potential local, NHS-based providers that can support the practices in the long-term.

“While this is a complex and time intensive process, conversations are continuing, with much of the discussions with the potential providers focusing on the CQC’s concerns, and how the issues will be addressed should they choose to take on one of the five practices.”

The Adver approached IMH for comment but did not receive a response.

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 of medicines. I have recommended the practice 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.”