Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Fell Cottage Surgery on 15 March 2016. 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.
• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed.
• The practice carried out clinical audit activity and was able to demonstrate improvements to patient care as a result of this.
• Patient satisfaction in respect of being treated with compassion, dignity and respect and being involved in decisions about their care was good.
• Urgent appointments were usually available on the day they were requested.
• The practice had a number of policies and procedures to govern activity, which were reviewed and updated regularly
• The practice had proactively sought feedback from patients and had recently reformed their patient participation group.
• The practice was aware of areas of patient dissatisfaction but had taken steps to Mke improvements in relation to these.
• The practice had effective systems in place to support patients with long term conditions.

However there were areas of practice where the provider needs to make improvements.

Importantly, the provider should:

• Consider routinely offering annual reviews to patients with a learning disability and carers.
• Share trends and themes and lessons learned from significant events and complaints with the entire staff group.
• Review and update the practice complaints leaflet and ensure information advising patients how to make a complaint is displayed within the practice in patient-accessible areas.
• Ensure all staff have received the appropriate level of safeguarding training in line with the latest guidance.
• Review the process for determining topics for clinical audit activity.
• Update their training matrix with completed online training details so they can monitor and assure themselves of the training staff have completed.
• Ensure that fire evacuation drills are carried out on a regular basis.
• Consider formalising discussions already already taking place at meetings about succession planning and future developments within the practice into a business plan and strategy discussion.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice