Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Abbey House Medical Practice on 17 November 2015. Overall the practice is rated as outstanding. We found the domains of caring and responsive were outstanding which resulted in the practice being outstanding overall.

Our key findings across all the areas we inspected were as follows:

• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns, and to report incidents and near misses. Information about safety was recorded, monitored, appropriately reviewed and addressed.
• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed.
• Patients’ needs were assessed and care was planned and delivered following best practice guidance. Staff had received training appropriate to their roles and any further training needs had been identified and planned.
• Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.
• Information about services and how to complain was available and easy to understand.
• Patients said they found it easy to make an appointment with a named GP and that there was continuity of care, with urgent appointments available the same day.
• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• There was a clear leadership structure and staff felt supported by management. The practice proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on.

We saw several areas of outstanding practice:

• The practice provided a young person’s drop in clinic where they could consult with a GP with a special interest in young person’s health and discuss issues such as sexual health, bullying and self-harm.

• The practice had a personalised care system where each GP carried out twice yearly care home reviews involving the pharmacist and care home staff to include medication review as well as clinical assessment and dementia review. Each GP also had an allocated personal assistant (PA) who worked specifically for them and dealt with queries from their patients and their allocated care homes. This allowed them to become familiar with these patients reducing the need for patients and attached staff to continually repeat information and provided continuity and co-ordinated care and ensured that queries were dealt with promptly.

• The practice had introduced a patient services assistant who was also the carers lead and was based in the reception area in a specific room accessible to patients.It was their role to help patients who needed to speak to a member of staff in private, or who were distressed. However there was an area of practice where the provider needs to make improvements.

Importantly the provider should:

• Implement a system to ensure the content of asthma care plans is available to staff.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice