Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Drs Grainger, Joughin, Jones and Blaylock on 10 December 2014. Overall the practice is rated as good.

Specifically, we found the practice to be outstanding for being well led. It was good for providing safe, effective, caring and responsive services.

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. Opportunities for learning from internal and external incidents were used effectively.
• The practice used innovative methods to improve patient outcomes. For example, co-ordinated services for families were arranged on Wednesday mornings. These included GP appointments for six week checks, practice nurse appointments for immunisations, midwife appointments for antenatal care and a health visitor drop in clinic.
• Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment. Information was provided to help patients understand the care available to them.

• The practice implemented suggestions for improvements and made changes to the way it delivered services as a consequence of feedback from patients, staff 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. A business plan was in place, was monitored, regularly reviewed 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 multidisciplinary working within the practice was highly structured and productive. They were focussed on risk and performance areas and the practice was able to demonstrate this resulted in improved outcomes for patients.
• Staff supported people to live healthier lives through a targeted approach to health promotion and prevention. Immunisation rates in 2013/14 were well above averages for the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).
• The practice were strong supporters of social prescribing. This encouraged patients to manage their own health, care and wellbeing.
• The practice had a clear vision to deliver high quality care and promote good outcomes for patients. We found leaders had a shared purpose and strived to deliver and motivate staff to succeed.
• The leadership, governance and culture of the organisation were used to drive and improve the delivery of high quality, person-centred care.
• There was strong working ethic of collaboration and support across the staff team and a common focus on improving the quality of care and patients experiences.
• We found there were high levels of staff satisfaction. Every member of staff we spoke with was openly proud of the organisation as a place to work and spoke highly of the open and honest culture. There were consistently high levels of staff engagement.
• There was an effective governance framework to support the delivery of the practice’s strategy and good quality care. The practice had a structured programme of regular governance meetings where matters such as performance, quality and risks were discussed.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP 

Chief Inspector of General Practice