Prof Steve Field, our Chief Inspector of General Practice, said: "We are extremely disappointed that the Royal College of General Practitioners has called for an ‘emergency pause’ to our inspections of general practices, which we carry out to make sure that people across England get safe, high-quality and compassionate primary care. The safety and quality of care of people who use these services continue to be our number one priority.
"Already our inspections have allowed us to rate over 1,100 general practices across the country as outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate. We believe these can help people to make informed choices about their care.
"So far, around 85% of these general practices have been either good or outstanding.
"However, when over 1 in 7 general practices are not delivering the care that patients have every right to expect, now is not the time for us to put a halt on our inspections.
"In the last few weeks alone, we have found some seriously deficient primary care, which has led to us cancelling the registrations of some practices, in the interests of protecting the safety and quality of care for people who use these services.
"As a practising GP, I have never intended for our inspections to be experienced as a burden to those in the profession – and for a well-managed practice, the information we ask them to provide should not present itself as one."
About our GP inspections
As of yesterday (Monday, 22 June 2015), we've rated 1,101 GP surgeries across England. Of these...
- 36 (3%) have been outstanding
- 898 (82%) have been good
- 126 (11%) requires improvement
- 41 (4%) have been inadequate.
We expect to have inspected all of the 8,400 general practices in England by September 2016.
In October 2014, we introduced our new inspection regime for GPs which are led by expert teams, use a broad range of information, and lead to ratings based on what matters most to people who use services: are they safe, caring, effective, responsive to their needs, and well-led.
In the last three weeks, we've cancelled the registration of three practices in response to concerns about poor care.
Read more...
You can read the about the call for a pause on our inspections on the RCGP website.
The safety and quality of care of people who use these services continue to be our number one priority.
Prof Steve Field