Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection of York Medical Group (YMG) on 16 and 17 November 2015. 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 pro-actively and actively assessed and well managed.
• 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.
• 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. However not all surgeries had a ‘how to complain’ notice displayed in their waiting rooms.
• Patients said they found it easy to make an appointment with their named GP and that there was good continuity of care, with urgent appointments available the same day.
• On the whole the surgeries had good facilities and were well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• There was a 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:

• Patients had the opportunity to attend any surgery, which gave them flexibility to suit their circumstances.
• York Medical Group(YMG) had an access team who specifically looked at ‘patient demand mapping’ to enable them to try new ideas for providing appointments when patient need was higher. This pro-active approach had shown patients’ needs were met in a timely manner. Appointment availability could be changed, using the techniques associated with mapping of previous times when demand was high.

• YMG were working to support patients who were at risk of hospital admission, to stay at home with support from health and social care professionals. This had reduced their number of in-patient admissions, in identified at risk groups. This was known as 'Admission avoidance'.

• All patients had a named GP and if an appointment was not available with them, their named GP consulted with them via the telephone. Patients commented favourably to us about how helpful this was when consulting their GP.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice