Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Cheddar Medical Practice on 2 June 2015. Overall the practice is rated as good.

Specifically, we found the practice to be good for providing safe, well led, effective, caring and responsive services. It was also rated as good for providing services for all of the population groups.

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

• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns, and to report incidents and near misses. Information about safety was recorded, monitored, appropriately reviewed and addressed.
• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed.
• Patients’ needs were assessed and care was planned and delivered following best practice guidance. Staff had received training appropriate to their roles and any further training needs had been identified and planned.
• 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.
• 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.
• The practice used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes, working with other local providers to share best practice.
• 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 (PPG).

• The practice facilities were designed and equipped to meet patients’ treatment needs.
• Information about how to complain was available and easy to understand.

We saw areas of outstanding practice:

• The practice is part of the North Sedgemoor Federation of GP practices in Somerset who use the Somerset Village Agent project . The project uses paid, part time, highly trained individuals living in the parish ‘clusters’ they support. They help to bridge the gap between socially isolated, excluded, vulnerable and lonely individuals and statutory and/or voluntary organisations which offer specific solutions to identified needs. The North Sedgemoor Federation also funds the Singing for the Brain service for people living with dementia, which was initiated in 2014 and is funded until 2016, and provided by the Alzheimer’s Society.

• We found one GP had been nominated as an “NHS hero” which is a new scheme to recognise the work that individuals and teams do every day in the NHS. They are the only GP in Somerset to have received this award.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice