Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The New Springwells Practice on 18 January 2016. Overall the practice is rated as outstanding.

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

• The leadership, governance and culture of this practice are used to drive and improve the delivery of high quality patient centred care.

• The practice has high levels of staff satisfaction.

• There was an open and transparent approach to safety and an effective system in place for reporting and recording significant events.

• 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.
• Risks to patients were comprehensive and well embedded.

• Feedback from patients about their care was consistently and strongly 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.
• Staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence based guidance. Staff had the skills, knowledge and experience to deliver effective care and treatment.

• 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. Information about how to complain was available and easy to understand.
• 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.
• Governance and performance management arrangements are proactively reviewed.

We saw areas of outstanding practice including:-

• The practice carried out a thorough analysis of significant events. These were reviewed at monthly clinical governance meetings. This ensured that all staff understood what actions had been taken to apply learning from each event.We saw a positive culture in the practice for reporting and learning from medicines incidents and errors. Incidents were logged efficiently and then reviewed promptly.

• We found that that the practice had made patient needs and preferences central to its systems in place to ensure flexibility, choice and continuity of care. For example, a nurse care co-ordinator looks after vulnerable patients, completes care plans and carries out home visits as required. They also liaise with the neighbourhood team to ensure a multi-disciplinary approach to their care needs.

• The practice closely monitored patient demand for appointments and as a result were able to respond to this demand in a short space of time. An extra GP appointment session was held from 7am to 8.30am in times of high demand. Reception and dispensary staff also worked these extra sessions to ensure that the patients could get their prescriptions for medicines as required after seeing the GP.

• Patients we spoke with told us they were extremely satisfied with the care provided by the practice and said their dignity and privacy was respected. They each told us that the practice was excellent and they felt that all the staff went the extra mile to make sure they were well cared for. Quality and Safety was the practice ethos and all staff worked well together.

• The practice had a vision and strategy in place driven by quality and safety which reflected compassion, dignity and respect. All staff we spoke with felt engaged in this vision and strategy through regular practice meetings and a strong team culture at the practice.

However there were areas of practice where the provider should make improvements:

• Further embed the practice system for the recording of prescription stationary

• Continue to look at ways to increase number of learning disability reviews undertaken.

• Review significant events and complaints to review themes and trends

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

We reviewed the information available to us about The New Springwells Practice on 7 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.