Archived: Dr Abraham Thomas Also known as Croft Surgery

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Dr Abraham Thomas’s practice, also known as Croft Surgery on 4 October 2016. Overall the practice is rated as outstanding.

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

• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns and report incidents and near misses. All opportunities for learning from internal and external incidents were maximised.

• Risks to patients were assessed, well managed and the practice adopted a range of processes, which enabled staff to take appropriate actions in the event of safety concerns.

• The practice had well established and effective systems, processes and practices in place to keep patients safe and safeguarded from abuse.

• Staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence based guidance. Clinical audits demonstrated quality improvement in a number of areas.

• Staff had been trained to provide them with the skills, knowledge and experience to deliver effective care and treatment.

• The practice worked with other health care professionals to understand and meet the range and complexity of patients’ needs.

• Data from the national GP patient survey showed patients rated the practice higher than others for several aspects of care.

• Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.

• The practice implemented suggestions for improvements and made changes to the way it delivered services as a consequence of feedback from patients and from the patient participation group. For example, the practice improved their appointment systems, which improved patient access and experience.

• Patients said they found it easy to make an appointment with a named GP and there was continuity of care, with urgent appointments available the same day.

• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• Information about services and how to complain was available and easy to understand. Improvements were made to the quality of care as a result of complaints and concerns. The practice proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on.

• The practice had a clear vision which had quality and safety as its top priority. Staff were clear about the vision and their responsibilities in relation to it.

• The practice had strong and visible clinical and managerial leadership and governance arrangements. Staff used their knowledge of the local community and patient population as levers to deliver high quality, person centred care. For example, the practice held a variety of health awareness days to raise patients’ awareness of various health related issues; implemented a new appointment system based on local feedback and shared their knowledge with other practices.

There were an area of practice where the provider should make improvements. For example:

• Establish processes to increase the identification of carers.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice