10 October 2025.

We are pleased to announce, The Care Quality Commission (CQC) have rated PCS out of hours services as “Outstanding” overall, after an assessment in August. 

Alan Stephenson, CQC deputy director of operations in the north, said:

“At Primary Care Sheffield, we found a service providing exemplary care which gave people the best possible out of hours GP experience. Attending out of hours services can be stressful for people, but kind and caring staff ensured people were at the forefront of their care and were treated respectfully during their appointments.

“Leaders worked well with local partners to meet the needs of people across Sheffield. For example, staff helped reduce A&E waiting times at Sheffield Children’s Hospital by seeing people via GP appointments who would have been waiting hours to be seen.

Inspectors found:

• Staff understood and respected people’s personal, cultural, social, religious and equality characteristics.
• Managers led by example and staff and professionals were highly complementary of their leadership.
• Staff maintained timely communication with people’s GPs to ensure follow-up actions and referrals were dealt with quickly and effectively.
• Managers investigated incidents thoroughly to keep people safe.
• Staff followed protocols to ensure they prescribed all medicines safely.
• Staff could recognise a deteriorating condition quickly and knew what action to take.
• Leaders had a very strong focus on continuous learning, development and improvement for all staff.
• All sites had good infection prevention and control processes in place to keep people safe from infection.

Read the full CQC report here.

Dr Lucy Cormack, Medical Director PCS said:

“I’m immensely proud of the PCS team and the exceptional services we provide to patients. We’re grateful for this recognition in achieving an overall Outstanding rating from the CQC. This achievement will inspire us to work even harder to continue delivering services that make a real difference to the lives of our patients.”

Dr Andy Hilton, CEO PCS said:

“This tenth anniversary year has been an incredible one for the PCS team and everything we’ve achieved together. Our focus remains firmly on supporting our 70 GP practices across Sheffield to deliver the best possible services for patients in our city.

The NHS Fit for the Future 10-Year Health Plan recognised that “the scale of PCS offers significant resilience to GP practices in the city, through the provision of shared back-office functions and flexing capacity across practices during busy winter and bank holiday periods.”

This CQC Outstanding rating reaffirms the real difference we’re making and the quality with which we continue to deliver that work.”