Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Cavendish Health centre on 12 November 2015. Overall the practice is rated as good.

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

• There was an open and transparent approach to safety and an effective system in place for reporting and recording significant events.
• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed.
• 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.
• 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.
• Patients said they found it easy to make an appointment with a named GP and that 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.
• There was a clear leadership structure and staff felt supported by management. The practice proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on.

We saw some areas of outstanding practice including:

• The practice held a Resilience away day which focussed staff on the ability to recover from setbacks, adapt well to change, and keep going in the face of adversity

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• The practice has a Health Advisor for the Elderly (HAFE) who is a highly qualified senior nurse. This is a practice-funded role.Their role is to look after the practice’s over 75’s. They undertook annual health and social care assessments and home visits as well as advice over the phone. They also liaised with social services and signposted patients to other health, social and voluntary services such as befriending. They provided anticipatory care and helped prevent hospital admissions by keeping patients well at home for longer. Patients are able to contact them directly

• The practice had led on a project to improve the use of a clinical records system so that information was entered and coded in a systematic and uniform way that allowed the user to see the key information about patients at a glance. They had created a screen cast which was shared with other local practices who had fed back to the CCG that they had found it very useful.

• Email consultations were provided as the practice was involved in the initial pilot with two other practices. Learning from the pilot has been disseminated to local practices as a report. 199 face to face consultations were saved. This was embedded securely within SystmOne (our GP records) to ensure secure information governance.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

We spoke with one patient during our visit. The patient was satisfied with the service they received. The patient said “all staff are great." They stated that their GP gave them options and information about medical conditions and treatment and said “they listen, they explain things clearly”. People's needs were assessed and their care was planned in a way to ensure their safety and welfare.

There was a procedure for dealing with medical emergencies and emergency equipment was available for staff.

Patients were protected from the risk of abuse, because the provider had taken reasonable steps to identify the possibility of abuse and prevent abuse from happening.

The practice employed suitably qualified staff who were appropriately supervised throughout the course of their employment.

There were appropriate systems to monitor the quality of service people received. We looked at patient comments on the NHS Choices website. We saw that all comments had been reviewed by the provider. The annual patient survey was available on the practice website and there was also information on joining the Patient Participation Group (PPG).