Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We inspected this service on 6 November 2014. The inspection was a comprehensive inspection.

The overall rating for this service is good. We found the practice to be good in the effective, caring and well-led domains and good in the safe and responsive domains. We found the practice worked effectively to provide good care to older people, people with long term conditions and people in vulnerable circumstances, families, children and young people, working age people and people experiencing poor mental health

Our key findings were as follows:

• Patients were kept safe because there were arrangements in place for staff to report and learn from key safety risks. The practice had a system in place for reporting, recording and monitoring significant events over time.
• The practice had a patient participation group that took an active role in developing and improving patient services.
• The practice could demonstrate improved outcomes for patients through the use of a range of clinical audits.
• The partners provided strong and clear leadership which had led to a committed and motivated staff group.
• The practice was responsive to its different patient groups and patients were overwhelmingly satisfied with the service they received.
• The results from the practice satisfaction survey showed that 92% of patients said they were very satisfied with the care they received

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

People who use the service were given appropriate information and support regarding their care or treatment. We asked eight patients if the GP and other staff such as practice nurses explained their care and treatment choices to them in a way they were able to understand. All of the patients we spoke with agreed that they did. This meant that people who use the service understood the care and treatment choices available to them.

Patients' needs were assessed and care and treatment was delivered in line with their individual wishes. One patient told us: “They accommodate my wishes to see a specific GP who always listens to me when I see them" Another patient told us: "I had a blood test today and the doctor explained why I needed it. The doctor told me to ring for the results but I asked if the results could be sent to me by letter instead and they told me that they would arrange for this to be done”.

We saw that appropriate arrangements were in place that ensured regularly used vaccines were stored appropriately. We saw that the temperature of the fridges that were used to store temperature sensitive medicines were checked daily. We saw evidence that the correct temperature of the fridges was maintained. This meant that medicines were safe to use because they were stored in line with the manufactures guidelines.

We found the provider had systems in place for ensuring health care professionals, including doctors and nurses, were registered with their professional bodies at the time of their recruitment. We also saw evidence that checks were made to ensure they remained on the registers and were eligible to practice.

We looked at how the practice monitored the Quality Outcome Framework (QOF). The Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) is a system that rewards general practice for providing good quality care to their patients, and to help fund work to further improve the quality of health care delivered. The practice manager told us that meetings were held regularly to monitor the practice performance and look at how they could improve the quality of the service delivered to people.