NHS inspectors have found that one in three GP surgeries has been found to be putting patients patients at risk, with traditional small practices among the worst offenders.
Visits to all 7,365 practices across the country found out-of-date and contaminated medicines and mounting backlogs of test results, including cancer referrals, left for weeks.
At some practices there were no permanent staff at all, whilst in one case a man doing the work of a GP had no medical qualifications.
The report which was carried out by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) found that lartger practices were more likely to get good ratings.
The report comes amid a drive by health officials to push surgeries into 1,500 ‘super-hubs’ instead of allowing individual practices to work separately.
The findings are the first full set of results from a new system of checks on GP surgeries which began being introduced across the NHS three years ago. In total, 33 per cent of practices visited were found to be ‘inadequate’, or ‘requiring improvement.
