Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Warwick Gates Family Health Centre on 3 November 2015. The overall rating for this service is good. We found the practice was outstanding for providing services for older patients.

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.

• Information about how to complain was available and easy to understand.

• 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 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 Patient Participation Group (PPG).

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

• The practice had a clear vision about providing a quality and caring service in a safe way.

• Patients’ needs were assessed and care was planned and delivered following best practice guidance. Staff had received training appropriate to their roles and any further training needs had been identified and planned.

• There was a clear leadership structure and staff felt supported by management. The practice proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on.

We saw several areas of outstanding practice including:

• The practice had engaged in a project with AGE UK to assess and support all high risk elderly patients to identify and address clinical and social need. The practice had a nominated AGE UK care coordinator and an in-house coordinator to support this work. Positive results were achieved for three patients registered with the practice, who as a result of this comprehensive assessment process were found to have undiagnosed conditions. Additionally, the skills developed by practice staff from this project were being applied to all patients including older patients who were not included in this project.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice