Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Westgate Surgery on 16 November 2016. Overall the practice is rated as good.

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

• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns, and to report incidents and near misses. Information about safety was recorded, monitored, appropriately reviewed and addressed.
• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed.
• Staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence based guidance. Staff had been trained to provide them with 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.
• Information about services and how to complain was available and easy to understand. Improvements were made to the quality of care as a result of complaints and concerns.
• Patients said they found it easy to make an appointment with a named GP and there was continuity of care, with urgent appointments available the same day.
• 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 proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on.
• The provider was aware of and complied with the requirements of the duty of candour.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Ensure that patient feedback continues to be monitored to identify further areas for improvement.
• Continue to improve cervical screening uptake.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

We spoke with patients during our visit on 28 August 2013 but we did not speak to them during our follow up visit.

We found the service provider had taken steps to improve the recruitment and selection process so that appropriate checks were completed for each member of staff before they began work. No new staff had been recruited into permanent roles since our previous visit although we were able to review the records for a temporary member of staff and found these were adequate.

The provider had also taken action to ensure that registered patients were aware of, and had access to a complaints process if they wished to comment or raise concerns about their experience of care and support they received at the service.

When we visited this service we found that a high number of patients registered there were from different cultural backgrounds, many with limited spoken English. There were three members of staff who spoke two or more languages and this enabled them to provide a more effective and personalised service for these patients. Although there was a range of information displayed in the waiting room, this was not in alternative languages and patients had to ask for written information which limited easy access.

We spoke with six patients during our visit who had mixed experiences of being able to book appointments, which often ran behind time. One person said, “The staff are very good here, they give you time.” However another person said their experience was, “Not good,” and they felt the GPs did not listen to them.

We spoke with several clinical staff at the practice and found they had adequate systems in place to assess and monitor the care and welfare of patients registered there. In addition, they also had suitable arrangements in place to communicate with external health and social care professionals so that they worked in cooperation with others to ensure the needs of their patients were met.

We looked at personal files for three members of staff and found that the recruitment procedures were inadequate.

A complaints procedure was in place but it was not brought to the attention of patients in a suitable format.