All inspections: Lower Ince & Platt Bridge Medical Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Lower Ince and Platt Bridge on 8th September 2016. Overall the practice is rated as good.

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

There was a strong focus on safety. 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 and shared with other local providers.
The practice used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes, working with them to share best practice. They had introduced a patient navigation system to reduce impact on appointments and offered specialised clinics for diabetes and controlled drug-reduction.The lead GP is the main speaker at an event to promote the new Type 2 Diabetes Guidelines and how they can be used to help individualise patient care.
Feedback from patients about their care was positive with examples of life changing stories.
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. Examples included The Brick (a small charity helping the homeless) and Wigan Family Welfare (a Churches Association helping disadvantaged families in Wigan).
They had created a carer’s and cancer champion role that supported their population through palliative care and bereavement.They actively identified and supported carers.

The practice implemented suggestions for improvements and made changes to the way it delivered services as a consequence of feedback from patients, from the patient participation group and from staff. They offered text message reminders and telephone consultations in direct response to requests from patients.
The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs with a branch surgery to support the larger community. They were open from 8am until 8pm on Wednesdays when most neighbouring practices were closed and 8am until 12noon on Saturdays.
The practice encouraged and reviewed complaints, responded appropriately to patients who complained and made changes to the way they provided services if necessary. They monitored trends and undertook training if a need was identified through complaints.
The whole practice shared a vision that 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 and was in the process of being updated to make it more reflective of current standards.
It was evident that there was strong and visible clinical and managerial leadership and governance arrangements.
There were high levels of staff and patient satisfaction and patient satisfaction results were higher than national and local averages.

We saw some areas of outstanding practice :

The practice had identified a high number of Polish speaking patients and had met with them to increase their knowledge about how and when to access services.The outcome of this meeting had actively reduced inappropriate access of other services such as Out of Hours and Accident and Emergency.
The practice were very responsive to the needs of vulnerable patients including homeless people, asylum seekers and those patients with a learning disability. They were actively involved with several other organisations and support services helping patients in cases of domestic violence and other patients facing social issues. They were the recommended practice in the area for support of patients in these categories.They had a nominated member of staff who co-ordinated work in partnership with Wigan Adult Learning Disability Services to enhance the support provided to this group of patients

Chief Inspector of General Practice

Archived: Lower Ince & Platt Bridge Medical Practice Also known as IntraHealth Limited