Bellevue Medical Practice

On this page

• Overview
• Kindness, compassion and dignity
• Treating people as individuals
• Independence, choice and control
• Responding to people’s immediate needs
• Workforce wellbeing and enablement

We looked for evidence that the service involved people and treated them with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.

At our last assessment, we rated this key question as good.

At this assessment, the rating remains the same.

This service scored 65 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

The service treated people with kindness, empathy and compassion and respected their privacy and dignity. Staff treated colleagues from other organisations with kindness and respect.

People told us that they felt well cared for and had trust in clinicians’ decisions. Staff we spoke with understood Gillick competency and there was a process to ensure young adults had control over their own privacy and the amount of parental involvement in managing their care and support.

There was a separate room in the practice for people to speak privately to staff members should they wish to. People we spoke with on the day of the site visit told us they felt respected and treated with kindness from all staff at Bellevue Medical Centre.

However, the national patient survey highlighted that the practice was rated significantly lower than average on areas such as treating people with care. 62% of people felt that they were treated with care and concern. The national average for this question was 85%. The service showed us further evidence of feedback from patients which was largely positive. They told us that they used an electronic system for gathering patient feedback and that they appreciated the concerns patients had. They added that the Modality partnership had systems in place to support feedback and analyse any areas of concern. This was an ongoing project and they anticipated that the improvements to patient services would be reflected in future surveys.

The service treated people as individuals and made sure people’s care, support and treatment met people’s needs and preferences. They took account of people’s strengths, abilities, aspirations, culture and unique backgrounds and protected characteristics.

The staff understood patients’ personal, cultural, social, religious and equality characteristics needs and how they could be supported. An interpreter service was available, and some staff members were able to communicate in different languages. The signs offering interpreter services needed review to ensure they were easily understood by those who did not speak English.

This posed a potential barrier to people understanding the services and support available. The providers welcomed this feedback and told us they would conduct a review of signage and add signs in common minority languages suitable for their patient demographics.

The service did not always promote people’s independence, so people did not always know their rights and have choice and control over their own care, treatment and wellbeing.

Staff helped patients and their carers to access advocacy and community-based services. They employed a social prescriber to support people with non-clinical matters. The National GP Patient Survey data showed that people had confidence and trust in their practitioner was in line with the national average. Patient feedback highlighted opportunities to strengthen independence and choice. Satisfaction scores for clinical staff and overall GP experience were below the national average, and fewer people felt listened to during consultations (73%) compared with the national average of 85%.The service was working on a plan to improve patient satisfaction outcomes as a broader piece of work within the Modality group partnership using the skills and knowledge of various staff and managers across the group.

The service did not always listen to and understand people’s needs, views and wishes.

There was a system for appointment triage that ensured people with immediate needs for access to services. However, some people we spoke to told us that it was often difficult to get an appointment using the triage system.

The provider told us that people were encouraged to use the online triage service but were informed of their right to come into the service or telephone to complete the triage. However, people we spoke to told us it was often very difficult to get through to the practice by telephone due to long wait times. The National GP Survey showed a significant shortfall in patient satisfaction about how easy it was to contact the surgery with 25% of people satisfied compared to a national average of 52%. The service made appropriate clinical decisions, actioning pathology in a timely manner, actioning referrals and signposting to emergency services. They also offered urgent appointments for children.

The service cared about and promoted the wellbeing of their staff. The leaders supported and enabled staff to deliver person-centred care.

Staff told us they were valued by leaders. They said they felt happy at work and the team supported each other, they described an environment where they felt safe to speak up and were respected as an equal part of the team. Informal coffee sessions took place where staff could enjoy a hot drink and relax. Staff told us that they had access to information, tips and links to support on a range of well-being subjects and external support services.