Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Rowden Medical Partnership on 29 September 2016. Overall the practice is rated as outstanding.

• 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 maximised.
• The practice used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes, working with other local providers to share best practice. For example the initiation of complex care clinics.
• Information about safety was highly valued and was used to promote learning and improvement. For example the system developed by the practice to monitor patients on high risk medicines.
• 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 the implementation of an early home visiting service.
• 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.
• 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 stakeholders and was regularly reviewed and discussed with staff.
• The partners recognised staff for their areas of expertise and demonstrated a willingness to learn and improve systems suggested by staff and there was a strong focus on staff development.
• The practice was a teaching and training practice and had been selected to provide training and mentoring for GP registrars who required additional support.
• The practice had strong and visible clinical and managerial leadership and governance arrangements.

We saw several areas of outstanding practice:

• People’s individual needs were central to planning and the delivery of tailored services. For example, the practice had initiated a complex condition clinic where patients were seen by a GP, the pharmacist and the care coordinator to ensure patients received a comprehensive holistic review that met all health and social care needs .
• Patients with a care plan in place were given access to a dedicated urgent telephone line between 8am and 10am. Each day a GP was available to visit these patients between 9am and 10am. The purpose of this was to ensure that patients could be assessed and a management plan commenced early in the day, to help prevent unnecessary hospital admission . We saw a number of examples where patients had benefitted from this service.
• The practice had developed a system where all patients on high risk medicines were given written information, in a wallet sized card. Greater understanding had resulted in patients working in partnership with the practice and taking greater responsibility and ownership to ensure monitoring regimes were followed.
• The practices information technology administrator supported patients, who required it, on an individual basis or demonstration sessions during flu clinics, to gain access to online services which provided greater flexibility and convenience to access appointments and had increased the numbers of patients utilising on line services.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice