Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at George Clare Surgery on 15 November 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. Information about safety was recorded, monitored, appropriately reviewed and addressed.
• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed.
• 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.
• Feedback from patients about their care was generally positive. Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and that they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.
• Data from the National GP Patient Survey published in July 2016 showed patients rated the practice in line with local and national averages for most aspects of care.
• 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 sometimes found it difficult to get an appointment at a time convenient for them. The practice had identified that this was an area to be improved upon and proactively sought patient feedback to gain a better understanding of the issue.
• 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 well supported by management. Monthly whole team meetings were held to ensure effective communication throughout the practice.
• 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 identified a high proportion of obesity within the patient population compared to the local and national averages. We were told that lifestyle issuescreated an increased prevalence of diabetes. As a consequence of this the practice had commenced weekly diabetes specific multidisciplinary team meetings, which were attended by practice nurses, healthcare assistants, specialist community diabetic liaison nurses and the local diabetologist. The practice had seen an increasing improvement in patient involvement and attendance to health reviews.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are :

• Ensure that patient feedback continues to be monitored to identify further areas for improvement.
• Improve the recording of minutes of clinical meetings to evidence learning from discussion.
• Monitor near-miss dispensing errors to detect trends and ensure appropriate actions are taken to minimise the chance of similar errors occurring again.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice