Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Riversdale Surgery on 27 April 2016. Overall the practice is rated as good

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

• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns and report incidents and near misses. All opportunities for learning from internal and external incidents were utilised.
• The practice used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes, working with other local providers to share best practice. For example; they had received funding to work with four other practices in the locality on a project to improve outcomes for the older population.
• Feedback from patients about their care was consistently positive.
• The practice worked closely with other organisations and with the local community in planning how services were provided to ensure that they meet patients’ needs. For example; they hosted monthly carers clinics at the practice provided by an external agency.
• The practice had identified areas where they could improve care for patients and had worked proactively and collaboratively to make amendments to their systems and processes and developed new ones.
• The practice implemented suggestions for improvements and made changes to the way it delivered services as a consequence of feedback from patients and from the patient participation group. For example; the practice installed handrails to improve disabled access
• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• The practice actively reviewed complaints and how they are managed and responded to, and made improvements as a result.
• The practice had a clear vision which had quality and safety as its top priority. The strategy to deliver this vision had been produced with practice staff and was regularly reviewed
• The practice had strong and visible clinical and managerial leadership and robust governance arrangements

We saw an area of outstanding practice:

The practice worked in collaboration with four local practices on a project to drive improvement in care for 

older people and reduce emergency admissions from 

care homes. This had resulted in an 8% reduction in 

emergency admissions in the preceding 12 months.

We saw an area where the provider should make improvements;

• The practice should consider more proactive ways to identify carers on their register.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

We reviewed the information available to us about Riversdale Surgery on 4 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.