Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Dr Shamsee, Ward and Associates on 20 October 2016. Overall the practice is rated as outstanding.

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.

• Feedback from patients about their care was consistently highly positive and every aspect of the national GP patient survey was higher than local and national averages. For example, 99% of patients said they would recommend this GP practice to someone who had just moved to the local area

• The practice worked closely with other organisations and with the local community in planning how services were provided to ensure that they met patients’ needs. For example, in providing enhanced training to nurses to enable them to undertake complex dressings in-house.

• 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 by providing additional training to reception staff and the introduction of nurse led triage services to improve the overall telephone experience for patients.
• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• 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.
• The provider was aware of and complied with the requirements of the duty of candour. This was shown through a clear policy statement and regular reference to duty of candour issues at operational meetings that reviewed complaints and significant events. Openness was a highly valued part of the provider’s ethos.

We saw several areas of outstanding practice including:

• The practice used every opportunity to learn from internal and external incidents, to support improvement. The practice produced a comprehensive annual report which it publicised, sharing learning and actions across the whole team and the patient group. Where applicable the practice shared learning across the wider health network.

• The provider maintained the highest standards in relation to Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) and published an annual statement of compliance within the practice, notifying the patient population of any infection control incidents that had occurred.

• We saw that learning from complaints was embedded into the practice ethos with all team members engaged in reviewing and learning from complaints on a monthly basis. Learning was shared between the providers’ two locations in order to maximise opportunities for reflection. Complaints were anonymised and published at the location to both encourage patients to offer their feedback, feel encouraged to make a complaint and see evidence of the provider’s engagement.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP

Chief Inspector of General Practice