Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We inspected Urban Village Medical Practice on the 23 June 2015 as part of our comprehensive inspection programme.

From all the evidence gathered during the inspection process we have rated the practice as outstanding.

Specifically, we found the practice to be outstanding for providing safe, caring, responsive, effective and well led services. They were outstanding for providing services to most of the population groups, specifically those who were vulnerable.

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. Opportunities for learning were maximised.
• The practice used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes, working with other local providers to share best practice and meet the needs of the most vulnerable of patients, particularly homeless patients.
• Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment. Information was provided in ways to help patients understand the care available to them.
• 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 Virtual Patient Participation Group (VPPG).
• The practice had good facilities and multi-skilled staff and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs. Information about how to complain was available and easy to understand
• The practice had a clear vision which had equality, quality and safety as its top priority. High standards were promoted and owned by all practice staff with evidence of team working across all roles.

We saw several areas of outstanding practice including:

• The practice had provided primary care services to homeless people in Manchester for over 15 years, with over 700 homeless patients currently registered with the practice. The practice had developed a wide range of services for patients to improve their health outcomes including access to weekly multidisciplinary drop-in clinics. Additional to these in house primary and secondary care services the practice had also established The Manchester pathway (Mpath) a hospital in-reach service at Manchester Royal Infirmary (MRI).
• The practice ran a campaign during October 'Socktober' in which they encouraged donations of socks that they gave to the homeless who attend the practice.
• The practice had the largest substance misuse shared care service in place with Manchester drug and alcohol service ‘RISE’ with approximately 200 patients in treatment.
• The practice had flexibility within their appointment system to ensure all patients requiring on the day emergency appointments were seen.
• We reviewed the most recent data available for the practice on patient satisfaction. This included information from the national patient survey 2014/15 and the friends and family test. The evidence from all these sources showed patients were very satisfied with how they were treated and that this was with compassion, dignity and respect. For example, data from the national patient survey showed 96% of respondents described their overall experience of this surgery as good and 98% said the last appointment they got was convenient

• The practice had achieved Gold, the highest award in the NHS ‘Pride in Practice’ award from the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Foundation.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

We reviewed the information available to us about Urban Village Medical Practice on 16 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.