Fitzalan Medical Group: GPs react to news surgery is out of special measures

GPs at the Fitzalan Medical Group have thanked doctors who helped them improve.
Fitzalan Medical Group is out of special measuresFitzalan Medical Group is out of special measures
Fitzalan Medical Group is out of special measures

The Care Quality Commission recently rated the group as ‘requires improvement’, bettering the previous rating of ‘inadequate’, and took it out of special measures.

Yvonne Grant is one of the doctors at the surgery, along with Laura Smyth. She said they ‘owed a debt of gratitude’ to David Stokes and Nick Huston, who were sent to the surgery by the Innovations in Primary Care doctors federation to help them get out of special measures.

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She said: “They have not only done this with great skill but also with great compassion and sensitivity which ensured that the whole practice team was on board to get through our difficulties.”

Dr Stokes, who is also a GP at The St Lawrence Surgery in Worthing, also thanked Fitzalan’s ‘exceptionally supportive’ 16,500 patients while they improved how repeat prescriptions and important medications were handled. He said: “I would be comfortable for any of my family or friends to be looked after at this practice now, hand on heart.”

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He said the CQC inspectors would be returning soon to see if issues with the premises had been recitified. If so, their patient list would be reopened and people would be able to register with the practice.

The medical group will be merging with Park Surgery, in St Floras Road, Littlehampton and Westcourt Medical Centre in The Street, Rustington.

James Walsh, a retired Littlehampton GP and leader of Arun District Council, said this news would ‘relieve pressure on the surrounding practices, as well as enabling a better co-operation between all the local surgeries, and a better service to all patients in the town’.