Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Dr George Ahad’s surgery on 28 November 2016. Overall the practice is rated as good.

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

• There was an open and transparent approach to safety and an effective system in place for reporting and recording significant events.
• Risks to patients were generally assessed and well managed. There was no risk assessment for the presence of legionella or building electrical safety certificate on the day of inspection but we saw evidence that the practice had arranged for these to be done in the week following our inspection.
• Staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence based guidance. Staff had been trained to provide them with the skills, knowledge and experience to deliver effective care and treatment.
• Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.
• The practice offered a “Father Christmas” baby clinic every year when Father Christmas attended the practice and gave out presents.
• Patients praised the caring nature of staff and said that they would go above and beyond normal practice to offer support to patients and we saw evidence of this.
• Information about services and how to complain was available and easy to understand. Improvements were made to the quality of care as a result of complaints and concerns.
• Patients said they found it easy to make an appointment with the principal GP and 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.
• The provider was aware of and complied with the requirements of the duty of candour.

We saw one area of outstanding practice:

• The practice had developed a system of monitoring patients who were referred to the hospital for urgent assessment (the two-week wait rule). They monitored that the appointments were timely and that patients attended. If a patient failed to attend, practice staff contacted them to ensure that they were seen at the hospital.

The areas where the provider should make improvement are:

• Introduce records of checks carried out on clinical equipment and medications and for clinical equipment cleaning.
• Implement any control measures identified by a legionella risk assessment and building electrical safety check.
• Introduce a formal system for documentation of reviews of actions taken as a result of significant events, complaints and patient safety alerts.
• Implement systems to improve the identification of carers in the practice.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice