Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at on 14 December 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 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. Improvements were made to the quality of care as a result of complaints and concerns.
• Patients said they found it easy to make urgent appointments when needed but some patients expressed dissatisfaction that they had to wait up to two weeks for a routine appointment.
• 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 had a patient participation group (PPG). Feedback from members of the PPG indicated that communication between the practice and the group was infrequent.
• The practice responded to both written and verbal complaints, appropriate records were maintained and improvements implemented as a result.
• Evidence was available that demonstrated the practice complied with the Duty of Candour requirement.

We saw one area of outstanding practice:

• The practice was proactive in promoting the online patient access to full medical records and had been awarded NHS England Beacon status for this work. The practice had consulted with their patient participation group in 2015 and developed a patient consent form to agree to online access. We heard that the consent form had been adopted by number of other clinical commissioning groups. 46% of the practice’s patient list was registered for online access with approximately 280 patients registered for full access to their records.

The areas where the provider should make improvement are:

• Establish a rolling programme of regular clinical audit and re-audit.
• Continue to review patient access to routine appointments.
• Continue to review and develop the practice’s patient participation group by facilitating access for those who do not have access to IT or have no wish to use IT.
• Provide opportunities for members of the patient participation group to become more actively involved in the development of the practice by improving communication channels.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice