Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Church Street Surgery, Ossett Health Village, Kingsway, Ossett on 5 July 2016. 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 generally well managed.

• Staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence based guidance. Staff had been trained to provide them with 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. 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 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.

• 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 provider was aware of and complied with the requirements of the duty of candour.

  We saw two areas of outstanding practice:

• The practice delivered “bite-sized training” within clinical team meetings, subjects covered included female genital mutilation, acute kidney injury and feedback on a recent COPD audit. These training sessions were then stored on the practice shared drive as a resource.

• The practice operated a diabetic clinic delivered in conjunction with a local secondary care provider. The practice also offered specialist care management and enhanced services such as insulin initiation in-house.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

We saw steps had been taken to encourage patient feedback as the practice had an established patient participation group and patient surveys available in the waiting area.

During the inspection we spoke with four people who used the service who were happy with the care that they received. One person told us; “I’ve never had GPs (General Practitioners) like it, never in all my years. They really make you feel they care.”

There was a nominated safeguarding lead within the practice. Staff were able to outline the different types of abuse people may be at risk of and explain what signs they would look for to indicate a child or vulnerable adult was suffering from abuse. However staff had not received any safeguarding training which focused on vulnerable adults.

The practice had a recruitment policy in place. However when we reviewed this we saw it was out of date. The staff files we looked at did not demonstrate the recruitment policy had been followed.

We spoke with two doctors and the registered manager who were able to give examples of various methods used to monitor quality of the service and this included patient feedback and clinical audits.