Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The Grove Medical Group on 3 March 2015. Overall, the practice is rated as Good. Specifically, we found the practice to be good for providing safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led services. They were also good for providing services for the six key population groups.

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. Information about safety was appropriately recorded and reviewed;
• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed;
• The practice was clean, hygienic and good infection control arrangements were in place;
• Patients’ needs were assessed and care and treatment was planned and delivered in line with current legislation.
• Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and that they were involved in decisions about their care and treatment;
• Information about the services provided and how to raise any concerns or complaints, was accessible and easy to understand;
• Patients said they found it easy to make an appointment and urgent same-day access was available;
• Three patients provided feedback within the CQC comment cards about the difficulty in accessing the practice if you used a wheelchair. The practice was in progress of making plans to address these concerns. Otherwise the practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs;
• There was a clear leadership structure and staff felt supported by management. The practice actively sought feedback from patients.
• The practice had been visited by a team from Skills for People to learn how they could improve the way they met the needs of patients with learning disabilities. They had acted upon the recommendations made.

We saw an area of outstanding practice:

• For the last three years the practice had ran an annual workshop for young people to encourage emotional and physical well-being. Its aim was to improve self-esteem and confidence. The practice presented this at a Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) conference as an exemplar of health promotion.

However, there were also areas of practice where the provider needs to make improvements.

The provider should:

• review their approach to checking on the suitability of staff undertaking the chaperone role within the practice. The practice should consider obtaining police record checks through the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) for those staff that may be required to act as a chaperone for vulnerable patients or undertaking risk assessments for those who act as chaperones, but do not require a criminal records check because of the safeguards already in place.

• ensure patients with physical disabilities are supported to have equitable access to the service, by means of reasonable adjustments made by the practice to the facilities.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

We reviewed the information available to us about The Grove Medical Group on 15 May 2019. We did not find evidence of significant changes to the quality of service being provided since the last inspection. As a result, we decided not to inspect the surgery at this time. We will continue to monitor this information about this service throughout the year and may inspect the surgery when we see evidence of potential changes.