Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Brinsley Avenue Practice on 19 September 2016. 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.

• Feedback from patients about their care was consistently positive.

• The practice had strong and visible clinical and managerial leadership and governance arrangements.
• The needs of patients had been identified and measures had been put in place to bridge gaps. For example, the practice ran a voluntary befriending group for those who were socially isolated.
• 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.
• The provider was aware of and complied with the requirements of the duty of candour.

We saw areas of outstanding practice including:

• The practice was the third highest out of 85 practices for reporting safety concerns about patients. As a result of the practice’s reporting, the clinical commissioning group and local authority had implemented an information sharing agreement to enable quicker sharing of concerns about patients between the organisations.

• The needs of older patients had been extensively assessed. The practice had set up a befriending group to benefit those who were socially isolated. The health, social and care needs of older patients had been assessed and the practice had a list of 130 patients who received regular contact from an elderly care facilitator. Over time, the practice had made a difference by helping patients to secure benefits or referred patients to others for example, the fire service when home safety issues had been identified.

• The practice had 8% of their patients who lived in care homes; this was significantly higher than the national average of 0.5%. Individualised and responsive care had been implemented including regular care home visits and assessment of the reasons why patients had been admitted to hospital unexpectedly. The practice acted on the findings and implemented measures such as training care home staff and introducing protocols for the care homes to assist them on what do when patients deteriorated.

The area where the provider should make improvement are:

• Improve the recording of the actions taken following medicines alerts.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice