Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Millfield Medical Group on 26 January 2016. Overall the practice is rated as good.

Our key findings were as follows:

• Staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence based guidance.
• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns, and to report incidents and near misses.
• 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.
• Patients said they were able to get an appointment with a GP when they needed one, with urgent appointments available the same day.
• Extended hours surgeries were offered between 8am and 11am every Saturday morning. Patients
• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• The practice had comprehensive policies and procedures governing their activities and there were very good systems in place to monitor and improve quality.
• There was a clear leadership structure in place and staff felt supported by management. The practice proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which they acted on.
• Staff throughout the practice worked well together as a team.

We saw several areas of outstanding practice including:

• People could access appointments and services in a way and at a time that suited them. Patients had very good access to the service. Extended hours surgeries were offered between 8am and 11am every Saturday morning. The practice scored very highly in relation to nearly all questions about access in the National GP Patient Survey. The most recent results (July 2015) showed 100% of patients said the last appointment they got was convenient to them, compared to local average of 93% and the national average of 92%.

• Services were tailored to meet the needs of individual people and were delivered in a way to ensure flexibility, choice and continuity of care. The practice was the preferred practice for a number of students at a local school for children and young people on the autistic spectrum (c60 patients). Services were tailored to meet those patients’ individual needs. We were told about several examples of how staff from the practice positively engaged with the patients. For example, some patients were familiar with a particular consultation room so always had their appointments in that room.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

We reviewed the information available to us about Millfield Medical Group on 12 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.