Archived: Southmead and Henbury Family Practice

This practice is rated as Good overall. (Previous rating June 2016 – Good)

The key questions at this inspection 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 at Southmead Health Centre on 6 February 2019 as part of our inspection programme.

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

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

At this inspection we found:

• The practice had invested in a highly skilled nursing team who were working to address health inequalities within the patient community. We saw an innovative project to address the high prevalence of diabetes which had improved outcomes for patients. However long-term condition management achievement was lower than the local and national averages.
• 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.
• The practice routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. It ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence-based guidelines.
• The practice had a good programme of ensuring that childhood immunisations courses were completed to provide full immunity. However they had not achieved the 90% coverage across the range of immunisations.
• Feedback from other health professionals and services demonstrated that the practice worked well with them and provided support in the interest of the best outcomes for patients. Patients could access assessment and treatment locally instead to the need to travel to other locations.
• Staff involved and treated patients with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• There was a strong focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation.
• There was a mutually supportive team of staff working well together with the aim of the best outcomes for patients.
• Staff were given the opportunity for professional development.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• continue with developing an oversight of staff’s immunisation status.
• continue to monitor that the changes implemented for safeguarding adults training and disclosure and barring checks are sustained.
• continue to monitor and improve the uptake of health screening to meet Public Health England cancer screening targets
• to review and appropriately reduce exception reporting for patients with long term conditions
• improve uptake of childhood immunisations to a level required for herd immunity

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGPChief Inspector of General Practice

Please refer to the report and the evidence tables for further information.