Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at St Lawrence surgery on 02 August 2016. Overall the practice is rated as outstanding.

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

• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns and report incidents and near misses. All opportunities for learning from internal and external incidents were maximised.

• The practice used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes, working with other local providers to share best practice. For example they regularly shared the learning from significant events with other local practices.

• Feedback from patients about their care was consistently positive.

• The practice worked closely with other organisations and with the local community in planning how services were provided to ensure that they met patients’ needs. For example they supported their local GP provider company to submit a bid for funding from the Prime Ministers challenge fund to provide this service across Worthing and Adur.

• 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 (PPG). For example they installed a new telephone system in response to patient feedback.
• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• The practice actively reviewed complaints and how they were managed and responded to, and made improvements as a result.
• The practice had a clear vision which had quality and safety as its top priority. The strategy to deliver this vision had been developed with the patient participation group and was regularly reviewed and discussed with staff.
• The practice had strong and visible clinical and managerial leadership and governance arrangements.

We saw several areas of outstanding practice including:

• The practice employed a practice care co-ordinator who had a pivotal role as a liaison between the practice, patients and external agencies. This meant that members of the multi-disciplinary team (MDT), safeguarding teams, palliative care teams, pro-active care teams and carers all had a single contact point within the practice which ensured that patients had seamless care.

• The practice worked very closely with the patient participation group (PPG) and considered them an integral part of the practice team. For example the practice ran walking, singing and weight management groups in conjunction with the PPG in order to promote patient well-being. They formed a self-care forum that led their self-help initiative producing a variety of self-care leaflets and devoting an area in the waiting room to self-care advice. The PPG chair was involved in the recruitment and selection of new GPs and sat on the interview panel. The PPG also helped organise an annual health promotion day for patients and regular evening educational events.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice