- GP practice
Archived: Arden Medical Centre
All Inspections
19 July 2016
During a routine inspection
Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Arden Medical Centre on 19 July 2016. The overall rating for this service is good.
Our key findings across all the areas we inspected were as follows:
- There was an open and transparent approach to safety and a system in place for reporting and recording significant events.
- Information about patient safety alerts was reviewed and communicated to staff by the practice manager.
- Risks to patients were assessed and well managed through practice meetings and collaborative discussions with the multi-disciplinary team. Patients’ needs were assessed and care was planned and delivered following best practice guidance.
- The practice was part of a local GP federation, a group of practices that worked together to provide care and share best practice to improve outcomes for patients.
- Patients told us they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.
- The practice achieved results in the National GP Patient Survey published in July 2016 that were above local and national levels.
- Information about services and how to complain was available and easy to understand. Patients told us that they knew how to complain if they needed to.
- The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs. This included easy access for patients who used wheelchairs and baby changing facilities.
- There was a clear leadership structure and staff told us they felt supported by management. The practice proactively sought feedback from patients, which it acted on. Staff appeared motivated to deliver high standards of care and there was evidence of team working throughout the practice.
We saw an area of outstanding practice:
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Results from the National GP Patient Survey published in July 2016 showed the practice had consistently achieved higher than local and national averages for patient feedback about the service they received and in patients’ satisfaction with how they could access care and treatment.
Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)
Chief Inspector of General Practice
20/05/2014
During a routine inspection
The Arden Medical Centre is a small, town-centre general practice serving around 3,000 patients in the Stratford-upon-Avon area. The practice serves the local general community and provides a particular service to temporary patients visiting or working in the area, to teenagers and young people and to people who could not access services due to a history of violence.
We visited the practice on 20 May 2014 and spoke with the doctors and other staff and with patients. We also looked at procedures and systems used and considered whether the practice was safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs and well-led.
The Arden Medical Centre was safe. There were appropriate safeguarding procedures and an open and transparent culture among staff. Medicines were managed safely, the practice was clean and hygienic and there were arrangements in place to respond to emergencies.
The practice was effective and had procedures in place that ensured care and treatment was delivered in line with appropriate standards, except that in a very few cases people with diabetes were not provided with appropriate information. The practice measured its effectiveness through clinical audit. Staff were trained to work effectively and there were good links with other providers in the area.
The practice was caring, where patients were treated with dignity, respect and compassion. Patients spoke very positively of their experiences and of the care and compassion offered by the staff. The GPs provided personal intervention in people's end of life care.
The practice was responsive to people’s needs and met the needs of specific patient groups within its local population such as temporary patients, patients with a history of violence and teenagers and young adults. The practice had an accessible appointments system and was also accessible to people with limited mobility or to people whose first language was not English.
The practice was well led. There was strong and visible leadership with a good philosophy of care that was shared by all staff. There were effective governance procedures in place and a system of using information from patients and from records to monitor the effectiveness of the practice. There was an active patient representation group in place.