Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The Butchery Surgery on 8 December 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 incidents were maximised.

• The practice used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes, working with other local providers to share best practice.

• Feedback from patients about their care was consistently positive and was significantly above the local and national averages.

• 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, the PPG had put together the carers’ pack, using of their knowledge of local services that the practice provided to new carers.
• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• The practice actively reviewed complaints and how they are 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 produced with stakeholders 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:

• Following a significant event, the practice had instituted a “watch list” for their most vulnerable patients so that they had improved access and additional monitoring.

• The practice maintained a database of all home visits (including out of hours service visits). The practice used the data to see if any patients were receiving an increased number of visits which might indicate a deterioration in their health.

• All referrals of children to other services, including accident and emergency attendances, were reviewed by the GP lead for safeguarding.This helped the practice to take an holistic, family based approach to safeguarding children.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice