Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

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

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

• The practice had a clear vision which had quality and safety as its top priority. The strategy to deliver this vision had been produced with staff and stakeholders and was regularly reviewed and discussed with staff.
• The practice had strong and visible clinical and managerial leadership and governance arrangements.
• 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.
• Staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence based guidance. Staff had the skills, knowledge and experience to deliver effective care and treatment. The practice had a strong commitment to supporting staff training and development.
• Feedback from patients about their care was consistently and strongly positive. Patients described the GPs and staff as caring and professional.
• The practice worked closely with other organisations and with the local community in planning how services were provided to ensure they met people’s needs.
• The practice implemented suggestions for improvements and made changes to the way it delivered services as a consequence of feedback from patients for example one patient was developing an information leaflet for patients to explain about the different intrauterine devices (coils) and the fitting of these.
• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• The practice actively reviewed complaints and how they were managed and responded to, and made improvements as a result.
• Evidence was available that demonstrated the practice complied with the Duty of Candour requirement.

We saw one area of outstanding practice:

• The practice had developed a care coordinator role to monitor and respond to patients attending A&E and/or admitted to hospital as an emergency. This involved liaising with the hospital ward staff to understand the reasons for admission and identify the discharge date so that appropriate care and support was in place at the point of discharge for the patient. The practice had established productive communication links with the neighbourhood advanced nurse practitioner and worked in coordination to ensure these patients receipt appropriate care and support. This model of care and support was being monitored with a view to rolling out to other GP practices within the Clinical Commissioning Group.

The areas where the provider should make improvement are:

• Strengthen existing pre-employment checks for locum GPs by obtaining references and copies of indemnity insurance.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice