AN Ilminster GP surgery has admitted being ‘not well prepared’ after it was slammed with an ‘inadequate’ rating.

The Summervale Surgery received the worst possible overall result in its latest report from the CQC, and has admitted staff were ‘disappointed’ with the grading.

The Care Quality Commission is the health industry’s equivalent of Ofsted, and carried out an inspection on Summervale Surgery on August 7.

There were five main areas of inspection - whether the facility is safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led.

Staff received a good rating for being caring but the surgery ‘requires improvement’ for its responsiveness, and was labelled as ‘inadequate’ at being safe, effective and well-led.

Inspectors also rated how good the centre was for specific services, where it failed across the board.

Summervale ranked ‘inadequate’ for people with long-term conditions, for children and young people, for older people, working age people, those experiencing poor mental health, and for people whose circumstances may make them vulnerable.

But Dr Tim Deegan, GP partner at Summervale, feels changes have already been made since August.

He said: “The partners, interim practice manager and staff are working together to correct all the points mentioned in the inspection.

“We have already made necessary changes in numerous areas and this is entirely down to the hard work of our interim practice manager and all our teams together with support from the Somerset Local Medical Committee.

“We are satisfied we are offering a safe and effective service to all our patients but are very committed to making sure we can maintain quality in the future.

“We will make sure patients understand they can trust Summervale Surgery to deliver excellent healthcare.”

Dr Deegan was also quick to point out the standard of clinical care was rated as good.

He added: “Summervale Surgery has professional and enthusiastic teams who work hard to ensure we achieve a high quality, safe and effective service to our patients.

“We have advised our Patient Participation Group of our rating and the chairman is fully supportive of supporting us with our improvements.”

The management at Summervale did challenge some points in the report, but accepted that ‘significant improvements’ needed to be made.

Dr Deegan added: “Since our last inspection, CQC standards have changed and our policies and systems need improving to make sure we can be seen to be offering all required of a GP Surgery.

“Unfortunately, our record keeping was not good enough to be able to show this to CQC at the time of our inspection.

“We were not as well prepared for the inspection as we should have been and this has been reflected in the inspection rating on leadership.”

The Summervale Surgery shares a building, the Ilminster Medical Centre, with Meadows Surgery. Meadows Surgery received a 'Good' rating in its last CQC report.