Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Jubilee Street Practice on 19 July 2016. Overall the practice is rated as outstanding.

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

• There was a clear effective leadership structure and staff felt supported by management. The practice proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on.
• The practice actively engaged with external organisations such as the carer’s society and local schools to engage patients, promote healthy living and promote primary care services.
• The practice had an effective approach to staff appraisals, which included a system of 360 degree and peer review.
• There was an open and transparent approach to safety and a comprehensive effective system in place for reporting, recording and sharing learning from significant events both internally and externally with local practices and the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).
• 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 and was shared internally and externally to the practice.
• Patients said they found it easy to make an appointment with a named GP and there was continuity of care, with urgent and non-urgent appointments available the same day.
• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• The provider was aware of and complied with the requirements of the duty of candour.

We saw three areas of outstanding practice:

• Patients were invited to take part in practice learning time, where they participated in scenario based role reversal role play with clinical and non-clinical staff to improve customer service and patient understanding; this was fed back to the patient participation group, and increased the number of PPG members.

• A video was provided by carers registered with the practice which informed other carers of the care that they were provided with and about services available to them such as priority access to GP’s referrals into support services and support with letters to external agencies for financial support. Written information was available to direct carers to the various avenues of support available to them.

• The practiced designed a trigger tool, which had been adopted by Tower Hamlets CCG and identifies patients at risk of deterioration of chronic kidney disease (CKD), which led to 43 patients being coded as having CKD, 10 patients having their medicines changed and four referrals made to the CKD clinic.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice