Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Hoveton and Wroxham Medical Centre on 10 January 2017. Overall the practice is rated as good.

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

• 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 practice staff and was regularly reviewed.

• The practice had a relatively new management team in place and we saw that the practice had a cohesive team approach to ensure that systems and processes were in place.

• We found that there was an open and transparent approach to safety and a system was in place for reporting and recording significant events.
• The practice used a range of assessments to manage the risks to patients.
• Practice staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence based guidance.
• Practice staff had been trained to provide them with the skills, knowledge, and experience to deliver effective care and treatment.
• 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.
• There was a clear leadership structure and staff felt supported by management. The practice proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on. For example, a member of the PPG assessed and advised the practice on access around the building for wheel chair users.
• The provider was aware of and complied with the requirements of the duty of candour.

We saw several areas of outstanding practice:

• We saw many positive examples of care provided to patients. For example, the practice had staff who were named and identified as the carers’ champion. A practice leaflet detailed the carers’ group monthly meeting and the champion’s name and contact details.

  The practice had two named dementia champions. These staff members had attended external training and recognised adjustments that could be made to best support people with dementia. The dementia leads had made significant changes to the environment to ensure that patients who may be confused were put at ease. For example, the chairs and waiting room used a colour scheme known to be helpful to dementia patients and the black mat had been removed from the inside of the entrance door.

  • The practice demonstrated they valued education for all staff. They had supported their staff to be involved in a practice nurse course which had been accredited by Middlesex University, approved by the Royal College of General Practitioners and to run study evenings and weekends for local nurse practitioners, these included external speakers, prescribing updates and other professional issues. The nurses were also proactive in delivering patient education and had run several successful events. These events included topics such as men’s and women’s health and they had been well attended. Expert patients had attended and spoken about their experience and external speakers such as the chairman of the of the prostate society were able to add to the event.

The areas where the provider should make improvement are:

• The practice should audit the processing of incoming correspondence to ensure that protocols are being followed.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

We reviewed the information available to us about Hoveton and Wroxham Medical Centre on 3 May 2019. We did not find evidence of significant changes to the quality of service being provided since the last inspection. As a result, we decided not to inspect the surgery at this time. We will continue to monitor this information about this service throughout the year and may inspect the surgery when we see evidence of potential changes.