Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection on 20 October 2015.

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 with the exception of legionella and fire risk assessments.
• Patients’ needs were assessed and care was planned and delivered following best practice guidance. Staff had received most of the training appropriate to their roles and any further training needs had been identified and planned.

• Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.
• Information about services and how to complain was available and easy to understand.
• Patients said they found it easy to make an appointment with a named GP and there was continuity of care, with urgent appointments available the same day.
• 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.

We saw two areas of outstanding practice:

• The practice manager and members of the patient participation group actively sought feedback by sitting in the waiting area talking with patients and observing their experiences. They had an active patient participation group and met quarterly to share feedback with them and actions taken as a result of the feedback, such as employing a female GP after a survey suggested this is what patients had requested.

• The practice had a high number of asylum seekers and transient patients and worked hard to provide a good service for these groups. Of those registered at the practice 27% did not have English as their first language. The practice worked closely with translation services and there were suggestion boxes clearly visible on both sites with feedback forms showing sad and smiley faces to include all patients whose first language is not English (there were 68 different languages spoken by patients registered at the practice). Longer appointments were made available where translation services were required.

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

Importantly the provider should:

• Ensure all staff attend/update children and adult safeguarding training as required for their role.
• Ensure staff attend infection control training as required for their role.
• Ensure annual fire risk and legionella risk assessments are completed and an action plan implemented in accordance with the findings.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice