Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Clarendon Medical Practice on 01 December 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 to report incidents and near misses. Information about safety was recorded, monitored, appropriately reviewed and addressed.
• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed, including those relating to recruitment checks.
• 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 was not always easy to get through to the practice to make an appointment with a GP, however when they were able to get through to the surgery they were able to make appointments and appreciated the ease of access via the open surgery twice a week.
• Urgent appointments were 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.

The areas where the provider should make improvement are:

• Ensure actions and outcomes of significant events are recoreded and reviewed

• Ensure multidisaplinary meeting and palliative care meetings are minuted and actions and outcomes recorded.

• Ensure when carrying out audits they complete a full audit cycle.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

We found that patients who used the service were provided with appropriate information about the care, treatment and support choices available. Patient’s told us they were given good information about their treatments by GPs. They told us GPs explained the treatment to them, they felt involved and they were consulted about their treatment.

Patients told us they felt their GP listened to them and this was important to them.

Patients described the care they received from Clarendon Medical Centre as ‘excellent care’.

Another patient said they received ‘good care and treatment’ each time they visited the surgery.

One patient said: “The GPs are fantastic. I can’t fault them, they really listen and I think they care.”

We found that patients had access to a good range of health promotional information and advice.

We found patients’ experience of accessing appointments at the surgery varied. Some patients told us it was difficult to access an appointment and other patients told us they hadn’t experienced any difficulties.

We found that staff were trained to undertake and perform their roles and responsibilities. Staff told us they received good support from the practice manager and from GPs at the practice.

The practice had a number of systems in place to assess, monitor and improve the quality of service patients received. This ensured that patient’s health care needs were monitored and responded to appropriately.

We found that improvements were needed to ensure that the premises were safe and were being adequately maintained.

We reviewed the information available to us about Clarendon Medical Centre on 27 April 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.