Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Spencer Street Surgery on 2 August 2016. Overall the practice is rated as good.

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

• There was an open and transparent approach to safety and an effective system in place for reporting and recording significant events.
• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed.
• Staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence based guidance. Staff had been trained to provide them with the skills, knowledge and experience to deliver effective care and treatment.
• 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. Improvements were made to the quality of care as a result of complaints and concerns.
• Patients said they found it easy to make an appointment with a named GP and there was continuity of care, 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 found staff spoke enthusiastically about working at the practice, and there was a strong sense of team spirit. We found staff were highly motivated to provide a good service and were supported to do this by the partners.
• The practice produced a quarterly ‘How Am I Driving’ report to monitor performance, benchmark and set targets for continual improvement.
• The provider was aware of and complied with the requirements of the Duty of Candour regulation.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

Spencer Street Surgery is a GP practice situated in the city of Carlisle. The main surgery is in Spencer Street in the city centre. There is a branch surgery in Blackwell Road three miles away in the area of Currock in Carlisle. During our inspection we visited both sites. There are approximately 11,500 patients registered with the surgery.

The patients were very complimentary of the service, particularly the appointments system and we received excellent feedback from the comment cards which were left for patients to complete during our inspection.

We found that clinical governance was good and the practice was well led.

We reviewed the information available to us about Spencer Street Surgery on 6 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.