Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The Jolly Medical Centre on 18 July 2017. Overall the practice is rated as good.

Our key findings were as follows:

• The practice used their knowledge of the local community and patient population as levers to deliver high quality and person centred care.
• The practice had an effective programme of continuous clinical and internal audits. The audits demonstrated quality improvements and staff were actively engaged in monitoring and improving patient outcomes as a result.
• There was an open and transparent approach to safety and a system in place for reporting and recording significant events with learning outcomes documented.

• The practice had completed two in-house surveys in the last two years in order to understand and improve their patient satisfaction survey results.

• Staff were aware of current evidence based guidance. Staff had been trained to provide them with the skills and knowledge to deliver effective care and treatment. Staff told us morale was good.
• Information about services and how to complain was available. Improvements were made to the quality of care as a result of complaints and concerns.
• 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 supported by management. The practice proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on.
• The provider was aware of the requirements of the duty of candour. Examples we reviewed showed the practice complied with these requirements.

We saw several areas of outstanding practice including:

• The practice identified all house bound patients in the practice and offered to arrange a free fire safety check at their home. Ten referrals were arranged by the practice through the local fire department, who arranged to visit patients and offered safety and fire detectors checks. This action resulted from a learning point from an incident relating to a housebound patient.
• The practice designed a confidential request slip to support patients who wanted to be seen by a GP confidentially or without extended family members present. The slip was submitted by the patient informing the practice to arrange this appointment. The practice made contact with the patient and a general appointment for them to attend the practice alone was arranged. The practice was seeing an increased number of patients, mainly female accessing appointments through the request slip.
• The practice had difficulty in patient’s uptake for bowel screening. The practice approached the Bowel Screening programme department, to ask for help and support to increase the practice figures. Educational sessions were presented by the GP to patients with great success. This work had resulted in significant improvements in patient numbers attending for screening. The work the practice had implemented had been recognised by the Bowel Screening programme team, who would like the practice to help support peers.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are :

• Review and improve the access arrangements to the building for less mobile patients.
• Continue to work on improving patient satisfaction rates with the care and services provided.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice