Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Moss Grove Surgery - Kingswinford on 19 January 2016. Overall the practice is rated as good.

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

• Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.

• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed. Patients’ needs were assessed and care was planned and delivered following best practice guidance. The practice had clearly defined and embedded systems, processes and practices in place to keep people safe and safeguarded from abuse.

• The practice was proactive in identifying and managing significant events. All opportunities for learning from internal and external incidents were maximised.

• There was a strong focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels within the practice. The practice had an effective programme of continuous clinical and internal audits. The audits demonstrated quality improvement and improvements to patient care and treatment.

• The practice was committed to working collaboratively and worked closely with other organisations in planning how services were provided to ensure that they meet patients’ needs.

• The practice used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes and working with other local providers to share best practice. Staff worked with multidisciplinary teams to understand and meet the range and complexity of patients’ needs.

• There were consistently high levels of constructive staff engagement Staff we spoke with said they felt valued, supported and that they felt involved in the practices plans. Staff were actively engaged in activities to monitor and improve quality and patient outcomes.

• The practice implemented suggestions for improvements and made changes to the way it delivered services as a consequence of feedback from patients and from the patient participation group.

• The practice had a clear vision which had quality and safety as its top priority. We observed a strong patient-centred culture and we saw that staff treated patients with kindness and respect, and maintained confidentiality.

• The practice had a regular programme of practice meetings and there was an overarching governance framework which supported the delivery of the practice’s strategy and good quality care. Governance and performance management arrangements were proactively reviewed to reflect best practice.

• We observed the premises to be visibly clean and tidy. The practice had good facilities and was equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.

We saw some areas of outstanding practice:

• One of the GPs had a lead role in women’s health, the GP led on a programme of in-house workshops focussing on women’s health topics and gynaecology in particular. The success of the workshops led to the development of a gynaecology triage system. The practice completed an audit of their gynaecology system which highlighted a 20% reduction in their community referral rates and acute admissions.
• The practice had very active patient participation group which influenced practice development. We found that they had been involved in a number of successful events and projects at the practice including a successful children’s health event which was led by the GP safeguarding lead and supported by the PPG. The event covered child CPR and guidance on how to effectively manage minor illnesses in small children.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice