Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Sandy Lane Surgery on 23 March 2015. Overall the practice is rated as good.

Specifically, we found the practice to be good for providing safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led services. It was also good for providing services for older people, people with long-term conditions, families, children and young people, working age people (including those recently retired and students), people whose circumstances may make them vulnerable and people experiencing poor mental health (including those with dementia).

Our key findings were as follows:

• Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.

• 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 told us that the continuity of GPs was a good feature of the practice, although some told us that appointment times could overrun.

• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed, with the exception of those relating to the practice building.

There were some areas of practice where the provider should make improvements:

• Consider formalising working arrangements with relevant professionals to discuss issues related to safeguarding children and young people.

• Review the availability of suitably trained and vetted staff to provide chaperone duties to ensure a chaperone is available at all times.

• Improve record keeping of risk assessments and the actions taken in response to identified risks, to promote good governance.

• Review the emergency medicines for the treatment of seizures to ensure that they are age appropriate.

• Consider increased promotion of measures available to improve the health and wellbeing of patients. For example, the provision of flu vaccines in the ‘at risk’ groups and nationally available cancer screening programmes.

Investigate and implement measures to improve the time keeping of appointments.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice