Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Brinnington Surgery on 6 October 2016. Overall the practice is rated as outstanding.
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 had a strong vision, which put quality, effective care and treatment as its top priority. The partnership was structured with distinct roles and responsibilities, utilising the experience and skills of partners to the full. As a result, all business and clinical matters were delivered effectively at the practice.
- The strategy to deliver this vision had been produced with stakeholders and was regularly reviewed and discussed with staff.
- Patients described the GP practice as excellent; staff were described as caring and professional.
- 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.
- The practice implemented suggestions for improvements and made changes to the way it delivered services in response to feedback from patients. For example, the appointment system following a review in 2015 was changed to provide a minimum of 12 minutes per appointment and schedule a GP telephone appointment for every fifth appointment.
- 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 some areas of outstanding practice including:
- The practice was committed to safeguarding children and vulnerable adults. Safeguarding referrals were reviewed as significant events and learning from these shared within the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and the local NHS trust. For example, one child safeguarding incident resulted in changes to the practice’s postnatal baby check template to include more information about the family situation. The adapted template was shared with the CCG. The changes to the postnatal template enabled the practice to identify two incidents where young children were considered at potential risk and safeguarding procedures were implemented.
- The practice sent out ‘case finding’ questionnaires to patients over 65 years to identify any unmet health care needs.
- The practice had a designated ‘Speaking Up Guardian’ who was independent of the practice partnership. This provided staff with someone they could raise concerns to under the practice whistleblowing policy.
The areas where the provider should make improvement are:
- Implement a system to ensure patient medicine reviews that are undertaken are recorded in the patient records as being completed.
- To support the current risk assessment and to further mitigate any potential risk to patients, staff undertaking the role of chaperone should have a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check.
- Extend patient participation at the practice by implementing ways for patients who do not have access to the internet or social media applications to contribute to the development of the practice.
Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)
Chief Inspector of General Practice