Archived: Halesowen Health Centre

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Stourside Medical Practice on 16 February 2016. As part of our inspection we attended the main practice based at Halesowen Health Centre and we also visited one of the practice branches, Coombswood Surgery. Overall the practice is rated as requires improvement.

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

• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns, and to report incidents and near misses. Arrangements were in place to safeguard children and vulnerable adults from abuse that reflected relevant legislation and local requirements.

• There was a system in place for reporting and recording significant events. Staff explained that significant events were usually discussed on an informal basis in the practice. However, the minutes from the practice meeting did not demonstrate that significant events and were discussed as a team to support shared learning.

• There were some arrangements for identifying, recording and managing risks, issues and implementing mitigating actions. However, record keeping was not robust across all areas.

• Staff demonstrated a commitment to providing a high quality service to patients. The team made use of systematic alerts to prompt clinicians to conduct opportunistic medical checks to patients across the practice registers.

• The process for disseminating national patient safety alerts was facilitated by the practice manager, we found that the process did not cover periods in the event of the practice manager being absent from the practice.

• Data showed that patients rated the practice lower than others for some aspects of care. The practice had not developed an action plan to address the areas for improvement identified in the national GP patient survey.

• The practice had an active patient participation group which influenced practice development.

• Most staff spoke positively about working at the practice. However, we received mixed feedback from staff with regards to staff support.

The areas where the provider must make improvements are:

• Strengthen current systems for receiving national patient safety alerts by ensuring all clinicians are signed up to receive alerts in the absence of key staff members.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Ensure appraisals are completed for all staff to provide support where needed.

• The provider should improve governance arrangements including systems for recording, assessing and mitigating risks across the practice.

• Address areas for improvement highlighted through patient feedback such as national survey results.

• To continue to improve and promote a culture of learning at the practice and ensure governance is improved to document shared learning. Ensure that records are well maintained to reflect emergency protocols such as fire tests and to adequately track prescriptions.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice