Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Eve Hill Medical Practice on 15 March 2016. Overall the practice is rated as outstanding.

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

• Throughout our inspection we noticed a strong theme of positive feedback from staff, patients and other organisations who worked with the practice. Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.
• The practice was proactive in identifying and managing significant events. All opportunities for learning from internal and external incidents were maximised.
• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed. Patients’ needs were assessed and care was planned and delivered following best practice guidance. The practice had clearly defined and embedded systems, processes and practices in place to keep people safe and safeguarded from abuse.
• There were consistently high levels of constructive staff engagement. The management team worked closely together to motivate and encourage staff to succeed.
• The practice had an effective programme of continuous clinical and internal audits. The audits demonstrated quality improvement and improvements to patient care and treatment. Staff were actively engaged in activities to monitor and improve quality and patient outcomes
• The practice used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes and working with other local providers to share best practice. The practice was committed to working collaboratively and worked closely with other organisations 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 it delivered services as a consequence of feedback from patients and from the patient participation group.
• The practice had a clear vision which had quality and safety as its top priority. We observed a strong patient-centred culture and we saw that staff treated patients with kindness and respect, and maintained confidentiality.
• The practice had a regular programme of practice meetings and there was an overarching governance framework which supported the delivery of the practice’s strategy and good quality care. Governance and performance management arrangements were proactively reviewed to reflect best practice.
• We observed the premises to be visibly clean and tidy. The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs

We saw some areas of outstanding practice:

• The practice took a proactive approach to understanding the needs of their patients who were carers. Due to ongoing work to identify and support carers, the practices carers register had increased by 9% in a three month period. Practice data highlighted that there were 265 carers on the practices register and 4% of the practices list had been identified as carers. There was a dedicated carer’s lead in place and carers were offered support and regularly reviewed by the practice.
• The practice had identified that 21% of their carer population were also experiencing other conditions such as depression. Therefore the practice offered opportunistic depression screening for carers.
• The practice sent birthday letters to patients on their 75th birthdays to inform them of their named GP and to offer them an annual health check; 67% of the practices patients who were aged 75 and above had attended for a health check within the previous 12 months.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice