Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The Caxton Surgery on 8 September 2016. Overall, the practice is rated as good and outstanding in providing a responsive service.

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.

• Staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence based guidance. Staff had the skills, knowledge and experience to deliver effective care and treatment.

• Feedback from patients about their care was consistently positive.

• Information about services and how to complain was available and easy to understand. Improvements were made to the quality of care as a result of complaints and concerns.

• The practice worked closely with other organisations and with the local community in planning how services were provided to ensure that they meet patients’ needs.

• 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. For example, they had improved opening times, and completed surveys of extended access available. They also completed building improvements such as automated doors with the PPG involved.

• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.

• 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:

• The practice has developed its staff’s skillset in order that its clinical staff can deliver care directly at a refuge for domestic abuse patients with highly complex needs.

• The practice had devised a five point Dementia Action Alliance Action plan; including investigating the ways in which the practice physical environment could be improved to be more welcoming and accessible for patients with dementia, which was in progress.

• The practice had identified and liaised with local employers whose employees included 800 people from an ethnic minority group and provided literature in the most appropriate language to meet their needs.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice