Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Rooley Lane Medical Centre on 11 February 2015. Overall the practice is rated as good.

Specifically, we found the practice to be good for providing safe, well-led, effective, caring and responsive services. It was also rated as good for providing services for all population groups.

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. Information about safety was recorded, monitored, appropriately reviewed and addressed.
• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed.
• Patients’ needs were assessed and care was planned and delivered following best practice guidance. 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 was available and easy to understand.
• Patients said they found it easy to make an appointment, with urgent appointments available the same day.
• 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.

We saw two areas of outstanding practice:

• There were outstanding systems to manage prescribing practice.
• There were outstanding systems for information governance.

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

Importantly the provider should

• Assess the risk to staff working alone.

• Improve patient experience of contacting the practice by telephone.

• Improve financial and maintenance planning.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice