Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Huntingdon Road Surgery on 5 April 2016. Overall the practice is rated as outstanding.

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

• Patient feedback scores from the NHS GP Survey, the Friends and Family Test (FFT) and from our own comments cards was extremely positive about the practice. Patients expressed high satisfaction levels with the service citing attentive and caring staff, continuity of GP, the quality of treatment and speedy referrals as the reasons. 174 of 176 patients who completed the FFT would recommend the practice. 88% of respondents would recommend this surgery to someone new to the area.

• GPs held individual patient lists, encouraging good continuity of care and enabling strong relations to be built up between them and their patients.

• There was an open and transparent approach to safety and effective systems in place to report and record significant events which enabled learning to be shared.

• Safeguarding was given a high priority, and the practice had comprehensive, robust and effective procedures in place to protect patients.

• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed. There was a robust programme of infection prevention and control in place which was facilitated by the infection control lead GP.

• The practice worked closely with other health and social care teams and local community organisations such as university college nurses and the Alzheimer’s Society to deliver co-ordinated and effective care for patients.

• The practice used a wide range of both clinical and non-clinical audits to monitor and improve outcomes for patients.

• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.

• Staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence based guidance. Staff had a high level of training for their roles and were well supported in their work.

• 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.

• High standards were promoted and owned by practice staff with evidence of good team working across all roles.

We saw one area of outstanding practice:

• The practice had a committed and very active safeguarding lead who worked hard to ensure patients were protected. For example, in January 2016 and in addition to regular meetings with the health visitor, she had checked and updated the practice’s paediatric and domestic violence folder;hadcreated a document in relation to Gillick and Fraser guidelines and completed all pending items on the practice’s section 11 safeguarding audit. The practice’s child safeguarding learning reports had been used as a model example by other local safeguarding agencies.

The areas where the provider should make improvement are:

• Implement a protocol for the non-collection of prescriptions and medicines by patients.

• Read code children who do not attend hospital appointments on the practice’s clinical IT system and develop an appropriate follow up contact protocol.

• Actively flag informal carers on the practice’s clinical IT system to make them easily known to staff.

• Undertake regular fire evacuation simulations at the Girton branch.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGPChief Inspector of General Practice