Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We inspected this service on 24 October 2014 as part of our new comprehensive inspection programme. This provider had not been inspected before.

The overall rating for this service is outstanding. We found the practice to be good in the responsive, caring and effective domains. We found that the practice was outstanding in the safe and well led domains. We found the practice provided outstanding care to older people, people with long term conditions, people in vulnerable circumstances, families, children and young people, working age people and people experiencing poor mental health.

Our key findings were as follows:

• Patients were kept safe because there were arrangements in place for staff to report and learn from key safety risks. The practice had a system in place for reporting, recording and monitoring significant events over time.
• The practice was using innovative approaches to patient care including tele-health.
• Patients were extremely satisfied with the service they received from the practice and there was a well regarded patient participation group.
• Staff were all clear about their own roles and responsibilities, and felt valued and well supported.
• There was strong leadership of the practice with great emphasis on communication and training and education.
• There was a strong relationship between the practice and its very active patient participation group.

We saw several areas of outstanding practice:

• The practice employed a community and care co-ordinator to help patients by co-ordinating support and signposting or referring to other services.

• The practice used tele-dermatology to send pictures of patients’ skin conditions to hospital based specialists to speed up and improve diagnosis and treatment.

• There was a comprehensive programme of education and training for all staff using expert external speakers.

• The practice had a formal buddying system in place to ensure that patients experienced good continuity of care between part time doctors.

• The practice used Myers Briggs personality testing when recruiting new doctors to the practice.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP

Chief Inspector of General Practice