Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Poverest Medical Centre on 26 March 2015. Overall the practice is rated as good.

Specifically, we found the practice to be good for providing well-led, safe, caring and responsive services. It required improvement for providing care to people whose circumstances may make them vulnerable and for providing effective services.

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

• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns, and to report incidents and near misses.
• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed.
• Staff had received training appropriate to their roles and any further training needs had been identified and planned.
• 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.
• 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 proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on.

However there were areas of practice where the provider needs to make improvements.

Importantly the provider must:

• Ensure that patients with learning disabilities have their needs assessed, have comprehensive care plans in place and receive annual physical health checks.

In addition, the provider should:

• Improve systems for recording and reviewing significant events and other incidents in order to identify common themes and improvements which could be made.
• Improve the provision of care planning for patients diagnosed with dementia.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

This practice is rated as Good overall. (Previous inspection - 26 March 2015– Rating – Good overall and requires improvement in effective)

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Poverest Medical Centre on 18 April 2018 as part of our planned inspection programme.

At this inspection we found:

• The practice had clear systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When incidents did happen, the practice learned from them and improved their processes.
• The practice routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. It ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence- based guidelines.
• Staff involved and treated patients with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• Patients found the appointment system easy to use and reported that they were able to access care when they needed it.
• Results from the national GP patient survey showed patients were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.
• Patients told us that all staff at the practice were supportive and the care they received was excellent. Access to the service was good and patients told us they could book routine and emergency appointments when needed.
• The practice embraced integrated care and had referred 44 elderly patients onto the Integrated Care Network (ICN) programme, which is a scheme organised by Bromley Clinical Commissioning Group CCG that ensures elderly patients’ social, emotional, mental and physical needs are met.
• The practice had a good understanding of its population and tailored its service accordingly.
• We saw many examples of feedback from patients thanking staff for the care and support they received.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• The practice should review role specific training for all staff.
• Reviewing the adequacy of the external risk assessments.