Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Hoyland Medical Practice on 22 February 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.
• 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.
• Patients told us that they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect; they were involved in all aspects of 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 with a named GP, had access to urgent appointments on the same day and there was continuity of care.
• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• There was a clear leadership structure and staff felt supported by management. The practice sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on.
• The registered provider was aware of and complied with the requirements of the Duty of Candour.

We saw two areas of outstanding practice.

The nurse team had developed their own fail safe call and recall system for cytology screening. This was used to actively encourage all female patients requiring screening to attend and to ensure that every cytology result was followed up and recalled when necessary. Patients who had not attended for recent screening or had failed to attend follow up of abnormal results were flagged on the system. All staff knew to alert the nurses who would speak with them and offer screening straight away or an appointment if that is what the patient wanted. This call and recall system was checked on a monthly basis and there was no upper limit to the attempts made verbally or by letter to encourage cytology screening. This system was also used as an extra safety net to ensure all abnormal results had been actioned accordingly and patients had attended colposcopy where required. Annual audits were carried out and all abnormal results had been followed up accordingly.

The practice employed their own podiatrist to care for patients who required assessment, advice or treatment but did not meet requirements for NHS care.

However, there was one area of practice where the provider should make improvements:

A poster advising patients how to complain was displayed in the waiting room but it was not easy to see and did not contain details of any outside agencies, such as the ombudsman.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

We found patients were fully involved in decisions relating to their treatment and care. We found patients privacy and dignity was maintained whilst attending the practice. Patient’s overall experience when attending the practice had been positive. For example patients told us staff were “Nice and friendly” and “[Staff are] smashing …all of them are really helpful”.

We found processes were in place to safeguard patients from the risks of abuse.

We conducted a tour of the premises and found it was clean and tidy. There were systems in place to reduce the risk and spread of infection.

We found staff were adequately supported because they received regular training sessions and an annual appraisal.

We found there were effective systems to regularly assess and monitor the quality of service that patients receive.

We reviewed the information available to us about Hoyland Medical Practice on 6 June 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.