Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Old School Surgery on 20 April 2016. Overall the practice is rated as good.

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

• 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. For example, timely prevention of a disclosure of confidential information over the phone was shared with all staff to highlight the issue.

• 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 had a policy of reviewing patients with long-term conditions every six months.

• Feedback from patients about their care was consistently and strongly positive.

• The practice worked with other local providers to share best practice.

• 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.

We saw an area of outstanding practice:

• The practice took pride in the communitarian aspects of their work which they considered very important. For example, the senior GP had been writing monthly articles for the parish magazine for over 20 years. There was a strong culture of empowering patients and putting them at the centre of decisions about their care and treatment. We saw this reflected in their relationships, behaviour, attitudes and written material such as letters and the articles written for the parish magazine.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice