Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Mossley Fields Surgery on 9 January 2017. Overall the practice is rated as outstanding.

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

• The practice had an open and blame-free culture with regard to the identification and notification of any significant events and incidents. A thorough analysis of significant events was carried out and these were discussed at monthly practice and educational meetings.

• The practice used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes and proactively worked with other local providers. For example, the practice organised a health and wellbeing awareness raising event for patients which was attended by a range of local support organisations such as carers’ and dementia groups. In addition staff had worked in collaboration with the local fire and rescue service to promote “Safe and Well” checks. These checks aimed to assess fire risks in patients’ homes and to provide health and wellbeing information to the elderly and vulnerable.

• There was a comprehensive programme of audits, and a good understanding of performance and continuous improvement was evident. Findings and associated learning from audits were disseminated to staff.

• Feedback from patients about their care was consistently positive and above local and national averages. Patients we spoke with said that they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and felt involved in decisions about their care and treatment.

• The practice provided shared care services and clinics which would normally be delivered in secondary care settings such as hospitals. This allowed patients to receive care closer to their homes and reduced the burden on secondary care services.

• The practice implemented suggestions for improvements and had made changes to the way it delivered services as a consequence of feedback from patients and from the patient reference group (PRG).
• The practice had a vision which had quality and safety as a priority and there was a clear strategic approach to deliver this vision.
• The practice had a culture of teaching and training which was promoted. This ensured patient care was provided by staff who were knowledgeable and skilled.

We saw areas of outstanding practice at the surgery which included the delivery of a high number of responsive local health and wellbeing services and initiatives:

• The practice was responsive to the needs of vulnerable groups and delivered interventions or redesigned operating procedures to actively meet these needs. This included the delivery of shared care services, interaction with traveller families to promote child immunisations and vaccinations and the delivery of services to homeless people.

• The practice recognised the importance of health promotion to raise community health and delivered a range of activities to support this work. This included:

  • Holding a community health and wellbeing awareness raising event.

  • The utilisation of social media to promote health messages and to improve communication between the surgery and patients.

  • Active support and promotion of other campaigns and messages on behalf of other organisations such as “Safe and Well” checks delivered by the local fire and rescue service.

  • Patients were actively encouraged to participate in the Expert Patient Programme (which offered patients access to learning which supported them to build their confidence, skills and knowledge to more effectively manage their own chronic health conditions such as asthma, diabetes). Over the past 18 months the practice had written to 439 patients to promote the programme (over 15% of the patient list) and to invite them to participate.

• Clinical pharmacists and nurses delivered a minor ailments clinic. This freed GPs to deal with patients with more complex needs as well as increasing capacity and accessibility.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice