This practice is rated as Good overall.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? - Good

Are services effective? - Good

Are services caring? - Good

Are services responsive? - Good

Are services well-led? - Good

As part of our inspection process, we also look at the quality of care for specific population groups. The population groups are rated as:

Older People - Good

People with long-term conditions - Good

Families, children and young people - Good

Working age people (including those recently retired and students - Good

People whose circumstances may make them vulnerable - Good

People experiencing poor mental health (including people with dementia) - Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The Carepoint Practice on 28 March 2018. We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether The Carepoint Practice was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

At this inspection we found:

• The practice had clear systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When incidents did happen, the practice learned from them and improved their processes.
• The practice routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. It ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence- based guidelines.
• Staff involved and treated patients with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• Most patients found the appointment system easy to use and reported that they were able to access care when they needed it.
• The practice proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on.
• Information about services and how to complain was available. Improvements were made to the quality of care as a result of complaints and concerns.
• There was a strong focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation.
• The practice used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes.

We saw areas of outstanding practice:

• The practice had used innovative and proactive methods to improve efficiency and performance. For example, a streamlined document handling system had been implemented to reduce the volume of clinical correspondence that GPs dealt with. This had successfully reduced the amount of time that the GPs spent on unnecessary paperwork. This had improved clinical coding, increased identification of conditions and improved the accuracy of medicines reconciliation following hospital discharges. This had enabled the practice to process repeat prescriptions and make referrals within 24 hours, and process urgent hospital documents and urgent medicine requests within two hours.
• The practice used information technology systems to monitor and improve the quality of care. For example, the practice had developed an online tool which allowed to run the searches to identify patients who would benefit from a health assessment (who had no previous diagnosis to-date), as well as to review patients who had one or more chronic conditions
• A pathology management system had been implemented which allowed 95% of all results to be analysed and transferred into a patient-centred management plan within 24 hours. This process was operated by a trained clinical administrative staff member with regular oversight by one of the GP partners and the process was routinely audited.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Ensure there is an effective system to track blank printer prescriptions through the practice in line with national guidance.
• Continue to monitor practice performance relating to exception reporting under the Quality Outcomes Framework.
• Implement the system to promote the benefits of cervical and breast cancer national screening in order to increase patient uptake.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice