26 April 2017
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection on 26 May 2016 at Featherstone Road Surgery. At that inspection the practice was rated requires improvement overall and requires improvement for providing a responsive service to patients and for being well-led. This was because patients reported difficulties accessing the service in a timely way and the practice had not responded to longstanding patient feedback to address the problems. We also identified some concerns about the practice’s performance in managing diabetes and patient uptake rates for national screening programmes. This resulted in the practice being rated requires improvement for the care provided to people with long term conditions. The practice was rated good for providing safe, effective and caring services. The full report of the 26 May 2016 inspection can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Featherstone Road Surgery on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
We carried out a focused follow-up inspection on 26 April 2017. Following this inspection, we revised the practice’s ratings for providing responsive and well-led services and the rating for the care of people with long term conditions. All these aspects of the service were now rated as good. As a result, the overall rating for the practice is good.
Our key findings were as follows:
- The practice had taken action to improve patient access. The number of appointments relative to the patient list size had increased from an average of 72 to 77 per thousand patients per week.
- The practice had changed its appointment system and patients were now able to pre-book appointments up to four weeks in advance. More online appointments were available and the telephone system had been upgraded.
- We noted improvements to the practice’s cervical screening uptake rate since our previous inspection. Practice performance was now in line with the national and clinical commissioning group averages.
- The practice had also improved its management of longer term conditions as measured by the Quality and Outcomes Framework. We noted in particular, improvements to the practice’s approach to managing diabetes. The practice had introduced in-house diabetes clinics and screening checks to identify patients at high risk of developing diabetes.
- The practice had increased the number of patients it had identified as carers. The practice now had 108 carers, (that is over 1% of the practice list) and provided them with appropriate support.
- The practice had revived its patient participation group which was now meeting quarterly and was in the process of running a feedback survey to test whether the changes it had made had improved patient experience.
We saw one area of outstanding practice:
- The practice had identified a particularly low uptake rate for cervical screening among its Somali patients. The practice had a relatively high number of patients who had recently arrived in the UK with limited English and very variable understanding of the risk of cancer and cancer screening. Written invitations and reminders were of limited value with this group. The practice nurse (who spoke three Somali languages) had visited women at the local mosque to explain the purpose of the screening test and the procedure. As a result, the practice had successfully persuaded a number of eligible women to attend the surgery for the test and had also encouraged women who were not registered with a GP to register themselves and their families. This approach had contributed to the practice's increase in cervical screening uptake rates which were in line with the local and national averages in 2016/17.
Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP
Chief Inspector of General Practice