Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Drs Irving, Smith, Hacking and Rylance on 26 August 2016. Overall the practice is rated as outstanding.

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, and the system for doing so was regularly reviewed by all staff. All opportunities for learning from internal and external incidents were maximised.
• The practice used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes, working with other local providers to share best practice.
• Feedback from patients about their care was consistently and strongly positive.
• The practice worked closely with other organisations and with the local community in planning how services were provided to ensure that they meet patients’ needs.
• The practice implemented suggestions for improvements and made changes to the way they delivered services as a consequence of feedback from patients and from the 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
• The practice had a clear vision which had quality and safety as its top priority. The strategy to deliver this vision had been produced with stakeholders and was regularly reviewed and discussed with staff.

We saw some areas of outstanding practice:

• There was a strong focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels, leading to innovations such as remote blood pressure monitoring via text message and improved management of clinician time through the use of 20-minute cycles. Learning was shared with other practices in the locality, and we saw evidence of the improvements this was helping to drive in other services.

• The care delivered by the practice was highly regarded by their patients and other providers. They showed they provided effective support for the approximately 4% of their patient list who had been identified as being carers, and had won awards from a local carers’ organisation. An employee at the practice was a care navigator, who also cared for patients at other practices in the area. We saw numerous examples of how this had benefitted patients and their carers.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice