Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Woodlands Medical Practice on 19 May 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.

• The practice used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes, working with other local providers to share best practice. They had developed a Chadderton research hub that was in its early stages.

• The practice encouraged staff to have other roles. For example, staff had involvement with the clinical commissioning group (CCG) and one partner sat on Oldham Council’s Health and Wellbeing Board.

• 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 meet patients’ needs. They carried out social prescribing as a way of holistically treating patients’ needs.

• The practice implemented suggestions for improvements and made changes to the way it delivered services as a consequence of feedback from the patient participation group. For example an electronic check in facility had been installed at the reception desk. The PPG also liaised with the local Healthwatch.
• 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 two areas of outstanding practice:

• The practice promoted social prescribing as a way of treating patients holistically without necessarily prescribing medicines. This included a bereaved patients being introduced to others to help with social isolation, and help given to a patient with housing needs following the death of a relative.

• The patient participation group (PPG) had been established for 20 years. The practice actively encouraged and valued feedback from patients and the PPG gave examples of recommendations they had made that the practice had acted upon.

  We also saw one area where improvements should be made:

• The practice should ensure carers are identified so appropriate support could be provided. The practice had identified 0.3% of their patients as carers and this was a low amount.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice