Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

The Dunstan Partnership was inspected on the 4 December 2014.This was a comprehensive inspection.

We rated The Dunstan Partnership as Outstanding in relation to being responsive and good in relation to being safe, effective, caring, and well-led.

Our key findings were as follows:

Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns, and report incidents and near misses. Systems were in place to manage medicines and prescriptions safely and for managing infection prevention and control.

The practice had systems in place to ensure best practice was followed. This was to ensure that people’s care, treatment and support achieved good outcomes and was based on the best available evidence.

Information we received from patients reflected that practice staff interacted with them in a positive and empathetic way. They told us that they were treated with respect, always in a polite manner and as an individual.

Patients spoke positively in respect of accessing services at the practice. A system was in place for patients who required urgent appointments to be seen the same day.

We saw areas of outstanding practice including;

GPs personally telephoned all patients identified as “at risk of hospital admission” if they had been admitted and then discharged from hospital to conduct an initial post discharge review as soon as possible. The purpose of this was to initiate speedy appropriate action to prevent the patient being re-admitted to hospital if possible.

The practice had achieved the ‘Pride in practice gold award’ (in March 2014) to celebrate their dedication to delivering an excellent service to all patients. Pride in Practice is a quality assurance support service provided by The Lesbian & Gay Foundation to GP practices to support improvements in health outcomes for their lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) patients, as well as strengthen their engagement with, and understanding of LGB people.

To improve patient access the practice was open from 7am until 7.30pm Monday to Friday. These hours of access were particularly helpful to patients who work.

The continuing development of staff skills, competence and knowledge was recognised as integral to ensuring high-quality care. Staff were proactively supported to acquire new skills and share best practice. Staff training records and discussions with staff demonstrated that all grades of staff were actively encouraged to access regular training to enable them to develop professionally and meet the needs of patients effectively.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice