Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Valentine Medical Centre on 24 November 2015. Overall the practice is rated as good.

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

• The practice had a clinical lead structure in place which supported their patients and staff in areas of: safeguarding, medicines management, learning disabilities, human resources (HR), quality and financial.
• There was a strong and clear leadership structure and staff felt extremely supported by management team.
• Patient services were identified and implemented on site, one example was the practice offered an outreach service for patients with the local citizen’s advice.
• The practice had clean and good facilities, which were well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs with patient access to both ground and first levels via lift.
• There was an open and transparent approach to safety and an effective system in place for reporting and recording significant events.
• 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.
• Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.
• The provider was aware of and complied with the requirements of the Duty of Candour.

We saw a couple of areas of outstanding practice:

The medicine management lead and team were very proactive to ensure patient’s received the correct medication and checks. We saw evidence of the prescription manager working daily with all GPs, thoroughly checking each prescription from discharge letters to ensure they were actioned immediately. The lead GP had a repeat prescribing system in place and we saw evidence of a recent presentation referring to a recent prescribing review audit. This highlighted clear responsibilities of clinical staff and each process of the review.

The practice had a mission statement which all staff were very positive about, each member we spoke told us they felt involved in making the statement and this was a true reflection of the practice. This was evidenced by the staff annual away days where the mission statement was made up on a T-Shirt for each staff to wear, this was in 2012.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice