Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Stafford Health and Wellbeing on 28 September 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.
• 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, although some staff were not all up-to-date with some training.
• 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 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.
• The provider was aware of and complied with the requirements of the duty of candour.

The areas where the provider should make improvement are:

The provider should:

• Develop an effective system which identifies when training updates and indemnity updates are due and complete the outstanding staff training.

• Develop and implement a protocol for dealing with uncollected prescriptions.

• Implement a consistent system for checking and evidencing that monitoring for patients who take long term medicines on a shared care basis, has been provided before the medicines are issued.

• Develop and implement an effective protocol to follow-up on medical alerts such as the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) which includes documenting the action taken in response to the alerts.

• Review the way in which patients who are carers are identified and recorded.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

We reviewed the information available to us about Stafford Health and Wellbeing on 8 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.