Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Dr R J Matthews and Partners on 23 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 used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes, working with other local providers to share best practice. For example the practices work with the town council had led to benefits for patients.
• Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.
• 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). For example in collaboration with the PPG the practice ran a number of health educational evenings for patients.
• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• The practice actively reviewed complaints and how they are managed and responded to, and made improvements as a result.
• 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 strong and visible clinical and managerial leadership and governance arrangements.

We saw several areas of outstanding practice:

• In response to a decline in the number of practices offering minor surgery and an increase in demand in the local population, the practice had worked with the clinical commissioning group to become a provider of a community surgical service for Wiltshire. The service included, skin surgery, carpel tunnel surgery (a hand and arm condition) and male sterilisation surgery. The local population had responded to the service very positively and there was evidence of excellent feedback from patients.
• In response to high admissions from care homes the practice had successfully gained funding to appoint a team of nurse practitioners. This team delivered planned, proactive and coordinated care which ensured that the right care was delivered in the right setting by the most appropriate health care professional. This had led to a 58% reduction in admissions in 2015-16.
• The practice had implemented a service that covered assessment, diagnosis and management of uncomplicated dementia in conjunction with Alzheimer’s support. A memory awareness volunteer attended the practice one morning a week to provide informal support to those who require it. Alzheimer support featured the practice in a film highlighting cooperative working, which went on to win a national award. A GP continued to work closely with the town council to promote dementia awareness and were working towards achieving dementia friendly town status.

The areas where the provider should make improvement are:

• Ensure safeguarding policies reflect current legislation.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice