Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The Chaucer Surgery on 15 December 2015. Overall the practice is rated as good for providing safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led services.

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

• 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. Staff resources were shared with other practices in the group to enable practices to support each other and share best practice. The practice was looking at ways to develop this further and had started a staff skills analysis to facilitate this.

• There was a clear leadership structure and staff felt supported by management. The practice was supported by Malling Health’s (the group) regional management team

• There was an open and transparent approach to safety and an effective system in place for reporting and recording significant events. The practice used a Critical Event Toolkit which linked significant events to requirements under the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) to ensure that standards were maintained and safety was not compromised.

• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs. The practice proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on to improve systems and processes..

• Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.

However there were areas of practice where the provider should make improvements. The provider should:

• Review the process for handling verbal complaints to ensure all complaints are dealt with appropriately.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP

Chief Inspector of General Practice