Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Dr A Wood and Partners, more commonly known as Amersham Health Centre on 7 June 2016. Overall the practice is rated as good.

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.

• 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. For example, the practice had revised their extended hours following patient feedback.

• Amersham Health Centre had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.

• Feedback from external stakeholders, notably the local care homes which Amersham Health Centre provided the GP service for was positive.

• Written feedback from patients said they found it easy to make an appointment. Patient satisfaction for the ‘express nurse clinics’ was highly positive.

• The practice actively reviewed complaints and how they are managed and responded to, and made improvements as a result.

• The practice used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes, working with other local providers to share best practice. For example, one of the GPs had led a falls prevention pilot. The aim of this pilot project was to utilise existing guidance and best practice in order to develop a comprehensive multidisciplinary community based falls prevention service for older people.

• The practice had a clear vision which had quality and safety as its top priority. The strategy to deliver this vision had been produced with stakeholders and was regularly reviewed and discussed with staff.

• The practice had clear and visible clinical and managerial leadership and supporting governance arrangements.

We saw several areas of outstanding practice including:

• Amersham Health Centre had reviewed the needs of its local population and was providing a highly responsive service. For example, extended hours for the London commuters within the practice population,  enhanced safeguarding training for nurses, a vulnerable patient nurse for patients with complex needs, weekly ward rounds by a designated GP at the local care homes and daily ‘express nurse clinics’.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP

Chief Inspector of General Practice