Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Fulwood Green Medical centre on 27 January 2016. Overall the practice is rated as good.

Our key findings across all the areas we inspected were as follows:

• There was an open and transparent approach to safety and an effective system in place for reporting and recording significant events. 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.

• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed.

• Staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence based guidance. Staff had the skills, knowledge and experience to deliver effective care and treatment.

• Feedback from patients on the day of the inspection about their care was consistently and strongly positive. 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.

• Patients said they found it easy to make an appointment, there was good open access to GP appointment each day for urgent and emergency appointments.

• 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.

• 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.

We saw one area of outstanding practice:

• The practice offered a comprehensive, discreet and confidential sexual health clinic run by experienced GPs and practice nurses. The full range of sexual health services including sexual health advice, support, sexual transmitted disease (STD) testing and treatment and contraceptive advice was available for all patients. The clinic offered a drop in facility and operated alongside their extended hours from 5pm to 7pm on a Monday evening. Implants and contraceptive intra uterine devices (IUD/IUS) were also fitted by staff trained to undertake this extensive role. This enabled the patients access to a full range of sexual health services within the practice and patients we spoke with valued this service.

The areas where the provider should make improvement are:

• Infection control training should be undertaken by all staff.

• The provider should review the systems in place for the security ofmedicines prescription.

• The systems in place for responding to patient safety alerts should be reviewed. A lead person should be identified for this role to ensure that changes are made to patient care when alert information is received at the practice.

• All GPs should ensure that at risk children who fail to attend hospital appointments are followed up by the practice.

• A documented audit trail should be maintained for all patient complaints made to the practice.

• Staff files should have records and certificates to show the full and completed training undertaken for each staff member.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice