A SOUTHAMPTON surgery has been told that it needs to improve after an inspection found failings.

Patients told inspectors from the Care Quality Commission how they found it difficult to get an appointment at the Nicholstown surgery at the Fanshawe Wing of the Royal South Hants Hospital as the system cut them off after six minutes of being on hold.

In the report following the inspection in June, Professor Steve Field, said “Patients said they found it difficult to make an appointment with a named GP.” Although he added that urgent appointments were available the same day.

He added “Patients reported difficulties in making an appointment via the telephone. The system currently cuts off patients after six minutes of being on hold.”

The report also highlighted how there needed to be a better system in place to check that medicines stored in GPs bags were in date and the calibration of equipment..

Other criticisms of the surgery included that there was not a record of staff having received chaperone training, the surgery did not actively seek and act upon feedback in a timely way as there was not an active patient participation group, not all policies held at the practice were the most recent version as updated by the trust and recruitment checks for locums were incomplete and inconsistent.

However the report said that the surgery was performing well in a number of areas. The report said : “Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in decisions about their care and treatment.”

“The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.”

The report praised the surgery for creating links with local organisation to help provide additional support for patients in the community particularly young Muslims with Type 2 diabetes.

Mandy Rayani, Chief Nurse at Solent NHS Trust which runs the surgery said: “We are, obviously, disappointed that the overall rating overshadows the areas that CQC commended as performing good within Nicholston GP Surgery.

"However, we take extremely seriously the areas identified by the CQC as requiring improvement.

“Nicholstown is a surgery at the heart of a deprived community and has taken in nearly a thousand new patients since January.

"This brings with it a lot of challenges and we are encouraged that the CQC confirmed the services we provide are effective, caring and indeed, responsive to people’s needs.

“While we are genuinely pleased with all these positive areas, we would have wanted to achieve consistently good ratings across all assessed areas.

"As soon as the areas of improvement were highlighted to us by the CQC, we immediately put in place remedial measures.

"We have since made good progress to address the areas for improvement.”