Background to this inspection
Updated
14 June 2018
Widdrington Medical Practitioners is located in the Widdrington area of Northumberland and provides care and treatment to 2676 patients of all ages, based on a General Medical Services (GMS) contract. The practice is part of the NHS Northumberland clinical commissioning group (CCG). A dispensing service is provided for patients who live further than one mile away from the practice. We visited the following location as part of the inspection:
Widdrington Surgery, Grange Road, Morpeth, Northumberland, NE61 5LX.
The practice serves an area where deprivation is lower than the England average. Information supplied by Public Health England places the practice in the fourth least deprived decile. In general, people living in more deprived areas tend to have a greater need for health services. Widdrington Medical Practitioners has fewer patients aged under 18 years of age, and more patients over 65 years, than the England averages. The percentage of patients with a long-standing health condition is above the England average, and the percentage of patients with caring responsibilities is lower than the England average. Life expectancy for women (80.5 years) and men (78.9 years) is similar to the England averages of 83.1 years and 79.4 years respectively. National data showed that 1.3% of the population are from non-white ethnic groups.
The practice is located in a modern, purpose built, single-storey building. The premises include on-site parking, disabled parking, a disabled WC and step-free access. A dentist and an optician are also based in the building and provide surgeries once a week.
The practice has two GP partners (one male and one female), two associate GPs (male), a nurse practitioner and a practice nurse (female), a practice manager, a pharmacist and four dispensing staff, and a small team of reception and administrative staff. The practice is a teaching practice and provides training placements for final year medical students.
When the practice is closed patients can access out-of-hours care via Vocare, known locally as Northern Doctors, and the NHS 111 service.
Updated
14 June 2018
This practice is rated as good overall. (Previous inspection – 9 July 2015 – rating – good).
The key questions are rated as:
Are services safe? – Good
Are services effective? – Good
Are services caring? – Good
Are services responsive? – Good
Are services well-led? - Good
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Widdrington Medical Practitioners on 24 April 2018, as part of our planned inspection programme.
At this inspection we found:
- The practice had clear systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When incidents did happen, the practice learned from them and improved their processes.
- Staff had the skills, knowledge and experience to carry out their roles.
- The practice routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care and treatment they provided. Staff ensured that care and treatment was delivered in line with evidence- based guidelines.
- The practice organised and delivered services to meet patients’ needs. They took account of patient needs and preferences.
- Overall, patients found the appointment system easy to use and reported that they were able to access care and treatment when they needed it.
- There was a very strong focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation.
- Staff involved patients in decisions about their care and treatment and treated them with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
- The practice had a clear vision to deliver high quality care and promote good outcomes for patients.
- Governance processes and systems for business planning, risk management, performance and quality improvement operated effectively
We also saw an area of outstanding practice:
- One of the GP partners had devised a clinical system safety algorithm to help ensure that, following any type of contact with a patient, the practice’s IT system automatically identified any outstanding clinical tasks or overdue reviews. The algorithm provided staff with access to an appropriately worded letter which they were then able to issue to the patient. In addition, they had also devised other algorithms to carry out automatic searches to check whether patients prescribed high-risk medicines had received appropriate monitoring and if patients had any overdue blood tests that needed to be carried out. This had helped the practice to achieve their very good Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) results.