Leatside Surgery, Totnes.Leatside Surgery in Totnes is a Doctors/GP specialising in the provision of services relating to diagnostic and screening procedures, family planning services, services for everyone, surgical procedures and treatment of disease, disorder or injury. The last inspection date here was 1st May 2019 Contact Details:
Ratings:For a guide to the ratings, click here. Further Details:Important Dates:
Local Authority:
Link to this page: Inspection Reports:Click the title bar on any of the report introductions below to read the full entry. If there is a PDF icon, click it to download the full report.
6th March 2019 - During a routine inspection
![]() We carried out an announced comprehensive at Leatside Surgery on Wednesday 6 March 2019 as part of our inspection programme.
We based our judgement of the quality of care at this service on a combination of:
We have rated this practice as Outstanding overall -Good in the Safe, Effective and Caring key questions and Outstanding in the Responsive and Well led key questions. (Previous rating October 2015 – Outstanding overall )
At this inspection we found:
We found areas of outstanding practice:
The practice took a leadership role in the local health and social care community to identify and proactively address challenges and meet the needs of the practice population. For example,
Instigating and now supporting the Totnes Caring charity to meet unmet need in the community in relation to home help, transport, befriending and social activities.
The practice had a dedicated early visiting GP with the aim of avoiding admissions or reducing the wait for elderly patients in the emergency department. An audit of the project set up in Autumn 2018 showed that the practice had received 50 requests for visits. Of these 37 visits had been completed, resulting in 11 early admissions and 5 avoided admissions. The practice estimated that this had saved the Clinical Commissioning group £12,500 in admission costs.
There were consistently high levels of constructive engagement with staff, stakeholders and people who used the services. Rigorous and constructive challenge was welcomed and seen as a vital way of holding services to account and improving services. For example, when implementing the Advanced Nurse Practitioner role and changing the premises.
There was a deeply embedded system of leadership development and succession planning, which aimed to ensure that the service was not disrupted, and staff received the support required. Often this involved overlapping roles at considerable expense to the practice.
The areas where the provider should make improvements are:
Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP
Chief Inspector of General Practice
28th October 2015 - During a routine inspection
![]() Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Leatside Surgery on Wednesday 28 October 2015. Overall the practice is rated as outstanding.
Our key findings across all the areas we inspected were as follows:
We saw areas of outstanding practice. The leadership, governance and culture were used to drive and improve the delivery of high-quality person-centred care. which impacted on the population groups served by the practice. For example:
Older people
GPs at the practice provide daily medical support to inpatients at Totnes Community Hospital and one specialist GP had recently expanded the role. This included liaising with staff, patients, carers, social services and the voluntary sector to ensure patients once well enough to be discharged, do so in a timely, safe manner. The impact of this service also reduced admissions to the local district general hospital.
The practice worked in partnership with a third sector organisation, Totnes Caring. This team originated through the practice and have a GP on their Board. The 200 volunteers provide befriending, transport, and support to patients who need services that are not provided by the statutory sector. They organise a daily lunch club and arrange transport for patients to attend. The GPs refer patients and carers to the Totnes caring bi-monthly memory café for patients suffering with dementia. Appropriately vetted Totnes Caring staff were invited to the practice multi-disciplinary meetings to facilitate the support patients may need.
Families, children and young people
The practice had responded well to the low uptake of childhood immunisations in the town. The practice carried out an awareness campaign which included the local press as well as the Totnes Directory. The GPs also gained TV coverage on both the ITV and BBC on working collaboratively with the local schools, nurseries and Devon County Council to improve the uptake. The staff ran clinics outside of school times and offered ‘drop-in’ sessions, the result of the campaign increased immunisation uptake by 1.5%.
The practice had responded to the needs of the town by offering two family planning clinics per week, for all patients in Totnes including patients from neighbouring practices.
Working age people (including those recently retired and students)
The practice had been nominated for an award as General Practice Team of the Year in the HEART UK NHS Health Check Awards 2015. This was for outstanding teamwork in the delivery of a project/ innovation in the commissioning or delivery of the NHS Health Check Programme. The impact of this team delivered programme has been an increased prevalence and treatment of patients with pre-diabetes, diabetes and hypertension. The practice increased their Health Care Assistant capacity by 16 hours per week to improve access for patients.
People whose circumstances may make them vulnerable
The practice worked with the Caring Town Totnes group to recently raise the issue of homelessness and people begging on the streets of Totnes. Practice staff link with the local pastors and the ‘drop-in’ centre supporting homeless people in keeping these patients safe.
The GPs had also offered an outreach service to two traveller communities in Totnes to ensure they were aware of the services available, particularly for young family members.
The practice had also supported a programme in Totnes in offering sanctuary to refugees and asylum seekers if they wish to live in Totnes. Leatside Surgery stated they supported this to ensure people had access to healthcare.
The areas where the provider should make improvement are:
Introduce a system to ensure all equipment carried in GPs bags were included on the programme of calibration and safety checks.
Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)
Chief Inspector of General Practice
4th December 2013 - During a routine inspection
![]() Patients were very positive about the care they received and told us they thought the practice was "really good" and "satisfactory for my needs" and "super". Another patient said “I have no complaints at all." We were told that staff treated patients with respect, dignity and said staff were "lovely", "very kind" and "professional." Patients all said they had been involved in the decisions made about their care. One patient said "I am not bullied into anything. It is a two way discussion." Patients told us they could see the doctor they preferred and liked this, although it sometimes meant they had to wait a little longer for an appointment. Patients said it was easy to make a same day ‘emergency appointment’ and added, "if you phone early" or "if you tell them you need to be seen on the day they squeeze you in somewhere.” All staff knew the correct local safeguarding procedures to follow if abuse was suspected and all had attended safeguarding training. Patients told us that they always felt safe in the care of the staff. There were appropriate arrangements in place which ensured that staff kept their knowledge and skills up to date. Staff spoke about the supportive environment. The practice was organised and well led. There were effective systems in place to monitor the quality of the service provided and patients felt able to give feedback about the service they received.
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