Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Anchor Centre GP Practice on 11 January 2017. Overall the practice is rated as Outstanding.

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.

• The practice used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes, working with other agencies. For example, supporting patients to gain employment and housing.

• The practice tailored services to meet the needs of individual people and were delivered in a way to ensure flexibility, choice and continuity of care.

• We saw that staff were able to identify and respond to changing risks to patients including deteriorating health and well-being.

• Feedback from patients about their care was consistently positive.

• The practice worked closely with other organisations and with the local community in planning how services were provided to ensure that they meet patients’ needs.

• 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.
• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• The practice actively reviewed complaints and how they are managed and responded to, and made improvements as a result.
• The practice had a clear vision to improve the health of vulnerable and excluded groups which had quality and safety as its top priority. The strategy to deliver this vision had been produced with stakeholders and was regularly reviewed and discussed with staff.
• The practice had strong and visible clinical and managerial leadership and governance arrangements.

We saw several areas of outstanding practice including:

• The practice took a holistic approach to patient care, recognising the need to meet their emotional well-being as well as their health needs. For example, supporting them to write CVs, prepare for job interviews, join cookery clubs and allotment societies

• The practice provided extensive in-house services for the patient groups. It had been identified that attendance when patients were signposted to the external agencies was low, so the practice decided to arrange in-house weekly sessions. As the agencies became part of the practice team and patients became familiar with the staff the attendance and use of the support increased. Some of the agencies now providing weekly sessions at the practice, were The Law Society, a housing organisation and a dental nurse.

• There was numerous evidence to demonstrate that a number of patients had been supported by the practice to gain full time employment and housing.

There are areas where the provider should make improvements:

• The provider should continue to encourage patients to engage with the cervical screening programme.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice