Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Ellesmere Medical Practice 18 June 2015. Overall the practice is rated as good.

Specifically, we found the practice to be good for providing safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led, services. It was also good for providing services for older people; people with long-term conditions; families, children and young people; working age people; people whose circumstances may make them vulnerable and people experiencing poor mental health.

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, with the exception of leaving medicines for collection at a local hairdresser.
• 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.
• 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 the following areas of outstanding practice:

• The practice had used the NHS strategy, ‘Five Year Forward View’ to develop their vision for the way in which they would lead and develop services to meet the future needs of their patients. This included the development of a multispecialty hub to work in partnership with and integrate with other services, agencies and professionals. They had met with the clinical commissioning group (CCG) to discuss putting forward a business plan to develop this.

However there were areas of practice where the provider needs to make improvements.

Importantly the provider should:

• Review significant events and complaints over time to identify any themes or trends.
• Carry out a risk assessment to ensure that medicines left for collection at a local hairdresser are handled appropriately. This should include, the safe storage of medicines at the hairdresser, how patient confidentiality is maintained and checks that the person storing the medicines is a fit and proper person to do so. The practices’ dispensing standard operating procedures should be updated to include how these checks are to be carried out.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

We reviewed the information available to us about Churchmere Medical Group on 22 May 2019. We did not find evidence of significant changes to the quality of service being provided since the last inspection. As a result, we decided not to inspect the surgery at this time. We will continue to monitor this information about this service throughout the year and may inspect the surgery when we see evidence of potential changes.