Plains View Surgery

We carried out an announced assessment of Plains View Surgery on 22 November 2023.

This was a targeted review of responsive services. The practice was previously inspected in March 2019 and had previously been rated good overall and good in safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led. Any previous ratings for the overall rating, safe, effective, caring, and well-led will be unchanged following this assessment.

Rating at this assessment:

Responsive – Outstanding.

Why we carried out this review

We carried out this assessment as part of our work to understand how practices are working to try to meet demand for access and to better understand the experiences of people who use services and providers.

We recognise the work that GP practices have been engaged in to continue to provide safe, quality care to the people they serve. We know colleagues are doing this while demand for general practice remains exceptionally high, with more appointments being provided than ever. In this challenging context, access to general practice remains a concern for people. Our strategy makes a commitment to deliver regulation driven by people’s needs and experiences of care. These assessments of the responsive key question include looking at what practices are doing innovatively to improve patient access to primary care and sharing this information to drive improvement.

How we carried out the assessment

This assessment was carried out virtually, through an online meeting and review of documents. This was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements.

This included:

• Requesting evidence from the provider.
• A virtual meeting with the provider.

Our findings

We based our judgement of the quality of care at this service on a combination of:

• what we found when we carried out the assessment
• information from our ongoing monitoring of data about services and
• information from the provider, patients, the public and other organisations.

We have rated this practice as outstanding for responsive services.

We found that:

• The practice had a proactive approach to identifying the needs of patients and responding to them. This included instigation the provision of mental health counsellors for both children and adults to improve access to services with log waiting times.
• Patients could access care and treatment in a timely way. Data from the national GP survey showed the practice was one of two of the highest ranked practices in Nottingham.
• Performance in the national survey was consistently high and showed an upward trend, despite a reduction in satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The practice worked with their patients and Patient Participation Group to identify where they might improve.
• The practice implemented initiatives to improve phone and appointment access and worked towards continuous improvement.
• The practice dealt with complaints in a timely manner and learned from them.

Details of our findings and the evidence supporting our ratings are set out in the evidence tables.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Health Care