Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Westbury Medical Centre on 28 September 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.
• Feedback from patients about their care was consistently positive.
• The practice worked closely with other organisations and with the local community in planning how services were provided to ensure that they met patients’ needs. For instance, the practice had undertaken a detailed study of GP appointment demand and had put in place an action plan which had released over 400 GP appointments over a six month period and improved the range of appointment options available to patients who needed extra support. This learning had been shared with members of the local CCG.
• 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. For example, the practice had worked with the patient group to present a series of patient education events.
• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• The practice actively reviewed complaints and how they are managed and responded to, and made improvements as a result.
• 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.
• The practice had strong and visible clinical and managerial leadership and governance arrangements.

We saw one area of outstanding practice :

The practice had established a fitness and body conditioning club for patients with, or at risk of developing, long term health conditions and patients experiencing poor mental health. The club had an active membership of over 50 patients and we saw evidence of improved outcomes for patients including evidence of controlled weight loss, improved blood sugar levels and managed reductions in medicines taken. We looked at records of eleven patients who attended the weekly classes and saw that blood sugar levels had reduced by 10% for four patients with diabetes, three patients had managed to reduce or stop certain medicines and three had achieved their targets for weight loss.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP 

Chief Inspector of General Practice