Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Balliol Road Surgery on 27 September 2016. Overall the practice is rated as good.

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

• Patients said they were treated with dignity, respect and compassion. Patients were involved with decisions about their care and treatment.
• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed.
• There were clearly defined processes and procedures to ensure patients were safe and an effective system was in place for reporting and recording significant events.
• Patients’ needs were assessed and care delivered in line with current guidelines. Staff had the appropriate skills, knowledge and experience to deliver effective care and treatment.
• Care planning needed development. The practice used care plans produced by other providers, for example, the district nursing team, for palliative care (end of life) patients, instead of its own.
• Urgent same day patient appointments were available when needed. The majority of patients we spoke with and those who completed comment cards before our inspection said they were always able to obtain same day appointments, although a small number said it could be difficult at times. Some patients told us their appointments were often late.
• Patients said GPs gave them enough time and treated them with dignity and respect.
• Information about how to complain was available and easy to understand.
• Owing to the practice taking on a number of patients from a nearby practice which had recently closed, recorded patient outcomes recorded via the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) system were mostly below average when compared with the Clinical Commissioning Group average and national average. However we saw evidence improvement was being made.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Continue to closely monitor practice performance and identify areas for improvement.

• Resolve maintenance issues in a timely way.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP

Chief Inspector of General Practice

On the day of our inspection we spoke with two patients and three members of staff. After our inspection, we spoke with a doctor and five patients by telephone.

All the patients we spoke with were satisfied with the appointment system and when necessary were given an appointment on the same day. None of the patients we spoke with said they had experienced problems contacting the surgery by telephone. One patient told us: “I never have a problem getting an appointment when it’s needed.”

We saw that patients’ views and experiences were taken into account in the way the service was provided and that they were treated with dignity and respect. When patients received care or treatment they were asked for their consent and their wishes were listened to.

The practice is fully accessible for patients with disabilities. There were disabled parking bays close to the entrance in the car park. The surgery is also fitted with a hearing aid loop. One patient said: “I like the surgery building. Much more pleasant than some I’ve used in the past.”

We found the practice to be clean and well organised. Processes were in place to minimise the risk of infection. There were also processes in place for monitoring the quality of service provision. There was an established system for regularly obtaining opinions from patients about the standard of the service they received.

We reviewed the information available to us about Balliol Road Surgery on 14 May 2019. We did not find evidence of significant changes to the quality of service being provided since the last inspection. As a result, we decided not to inspect the surgery at this time. We will continue to monitor this information about this service throughout the year and may inspect the surgery when we see evidence of potential changes.