Inspectors find dirt and maggots inside GP surgery

The Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt praised the work of the chief inspector of general practice Professor Steve Field.

Mr Field headed the inspections by the health regulator, The Care Quality Commission, that has uncovered a catalogue of failings at some GP practices

Read: Inspectors find dirt and maggots inside GP surgery

The health regulator, The Care Quality Commission, said the next round of inspections will focus on GP out-of-hours services.

The commission said these are "likely to put patents at a higher risk of receiving poor care than from other general practice services."

The health regulator has uncovered a catalogue of failings at some GP practices with medicines stored in a way that puts children and patients at risk of infection and rooms so dirty they had maggots.

Read: Inspectors find dirt and maggots inside GP surgery

Campaign group Patient Concern described today's CQC findings on hygiene in GPs' surgeries as "unbelievable".

Watch: CQC: 'We will not tolerate poor and dangerous care'

Many GPs are working 11 hour days and seeing up to 60 patients a day in the face of increasing pressure to deliver safe patient care with diminishing resources, said the Royal College of General Practitioners in response to today's CQC findings.

RCGP chair Dr Maureen Baker described a "funding black hole worth £9 billion" in England over the past eight years, which she said was a result of investment being shifted towards hospitals.

Read: Inspectors find dirt and maggots inside GP surgery

GPs who are found to keep their practice in a poor condition can have "their registration taken off them", the author of a Care Quality Commission (CQC) report into conditions in doctor's surgeries told Daybreak.

Professor Steve Field said some of the doctors who had run surgeries with rooms so dirty maggots were found, had already "given up practicing in those practices".

"We will not tolerate poor and dangerous care," he added.

"A very small number" of GPs surgeries were in a state of disrepair and this does not reflect every health centre in the UK, a doctor from Swindon said.

However, GP Dr Peter Swinyard told Daybreak the 0.9% of surgeries which were declared "a serious cause of concern" by inspectors were "a small problem, but a very important one" and urged doctors not to ignore bad practice.

"Where they exist we must work very hard to remedy the situation, or at worst if the doctors and the surgeries won't improve...I am afraid the surgeries must be helped to close down or reprevision their services properly."

Read more: Inspectors find dirt and maggots inside GP surgery

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chairman of the British Medical Association's general practice committee, has said anecdotes of poor practice must not be used to distort reality.

Professor Steve Field, of health regulator CQC, is to introduce new-style inspections of GP practices, which will start in April 2014 and will involve a CQC inspector, a GP, a practice nurse or practice manager and a trainee GP.

Inspectors will visit every clinical commissioning group area in England once every six months, inspecting a quarter of the practices in that area.Every practice will have been inspected by April 2016 and given Ofsted-style ratings.

From January, new inspections will also focus on GP out-of-hours services.

Among the catalogue failures at GP surgeries found by health regulator inspectors were:

• In one Birmingham practice, people were queuing outside to make an appointment.
• At one practice, both GPs had referred each other to the GMC for incompetence. They were no longer working in the practice.
• In another practice in Leeds, the inspectors turned up but there were no GPs.

• At Dale Surgery in Sneinton in Nottinghamshire, inspectors found maggots and other insects, as well as dust and cobwebs.The surgery immediately sorted out the problem but inspectors said there was "no regular, effective and on-going monitoring of these standards".

• Some GPs left private medical files laying around, had medicines that were out of date, filthy treatment rooms and employed staff who had not undergone criminal record checks.