Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Dr McManners and Partners on 5 July 2016. Overall the practice is rated as outstanding.

Our key findings were as follows:

• Staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence based guidance. Effective arrangements were in place to ensure GPs kept up to date with new guidance. GPs prepared clinical protocols, which took into account national and local guidelines, which all clinical staff followed. At the time of the inspection there were 32 clinical protocols in place.
• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns, and to report incidents and near misses. All opportunities for learning from internal and external incidents were maximised.
• Feedback from patients was continually positive.
• Patients said they were able to get an appointment with a GP when they needed one, with urgent appointments available the same day.
• The practice used proactive methods to improve patient outcomes.
• The practice had strong and visible clinical and managerial leadership and governance arrangements.
• There was a clear leadership structure in place and staff felt supported by management. The practice proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which they acted on.
• Staff throughout the practice worked well together as a team. Many staff were longstanding members of the team and had worked at the practice for many years.
• Information about services and how to complain was available and easy to understand.

We saw the following area of outstanding practice:

• Relationships between patients and staff were strong. The practice operated a personalised list service, where each GP had an individual list of patients. Many patients told us they liked the personalised list system, this meant they were able to see the same GP each time and felt the practice offered good continuity of care. The practice scored extremely well in the National GP Patient Survey in relation to patients being able to see their preferred GP. The practice’s score in that category was the highest in the CCG and was the seventh highest nationally (from a total of over 7,300 practices).

The area where the provider should make improvements is:

• Continue to review the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) clinical exception reporting rates and take action to reduce rates where appropriate to do so.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP 

Chief Inspector of General Practice