Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Buckland Surgery on Wednesday 20 October 2015. Overall the practice is rated as good.

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

• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns and report incidents and near misses. There was a systematic approach to use all opportunities for learning from internal and external incidents.

• The practice used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes, working with other local providers to share best practice. For example, the practice were part of the one GP one care home scheme in the locality and had seen a reduction in hospital admissions.

• Feedback from patients was overwhelmingly positive. Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment and were given sufficient time when making these decisions. Information was provided to help patients understand the care available to them.

• The practice worked closely with other organisations and with the local community in planning how services were provided to ensure that they meet people’s needs. For example, the practice worked with housing associations, food banks, domestic violence teams and drug and alcohol services.

• The practice implemented suggestions for improvements and made changes to the way it delivered services as a consequence of feedback from patients and from the newly formed Patient Participation Group (PPG).
• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• Information about how to complain was available and easy to understand. Complaints were used to improve the service provided.

• The practice had clear leadership and a clear vision which had quality and safety as its top priority. A business plan was in place and discussed with all staff. High standards were promoted and owned by all practice staff with evidence of team working across all roles.

We saw several areas of outstanding practice including:

• The practice had flexibility of access to appointments. Access included a flexible boundary philosophy to support patients until they had registered at a new practice, for example, patients with unstable home environments or those between addresses. The practice offered extended appointment times regularly and if patients attended on the wrong day or at the wrong time they would be seen anyway. If a patient missed attending an appointment the practice telephoned the patient or organised a home visit.

• The practice had responded to the needs of homeless patients and those in financial hardship and worked with the Teignbridge Housing Association Team and referred patients to food banks. The practice also held a supply of dried food stuffs to hand to patients in need before they were referred to the food bank organisation.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

We reviewed the information available to us about Buckland Surgery on 29 May 2019. We did not find evidence of significant changes to the quality of service being provided since the last inspection. As a result, we decided not to inspect the surgery at this time. We will continue to monitor this information about this service throughout the year and may inspect the surgery when we see evidence of potential changes.