Archived: Henley Cross Medical Practice

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Henley Cross Medical Practice on 09 December 2014. We visited the practice site at 115 Tudway Road, Kidbrooke Village. London. SE3 9YX.

The practice has a branch surgery at 444-446 Rochester Way, Eltham. London. SE9 6LJ. We did not inspect the branch surgery location.

Overall the practice is rated as requires improvement. Specifically, we found the practice to require improvement for providing safe, effective and well led services. We found the practice good at providing caring and responsive services. It was good at providing services for all the population groups we report on, with the exception of people with long term conditions where it requires improvement.

Our key findings were as follows:

• Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment
• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs. Information about how to complain was available and easy to understand
• The practice was run by a long serving staff team, who felt well supported and were committed to their roles.

However, there were also areas of practice where the provider needs to make improvements.

Importantly the provider must:

• ensure that written job descriptions are put in place for the staff team. This had been raised and requested by members of staff during their appraisal meetings

• ensure they have a clear policy regarding which staff members would be subject to Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks, and that their recruitment policy is followed in the recruitment of new staff

• improve their arrangements to manage medical emergencies by ensuring recommended equipment and medicines used in the treatment of patients in medical emergencies is available or they undertake a risk assessment if a decision is made to not have these medicines and equipment on site.

• ensure that clear summaries of findings, lessons learnt, actions taken and second cycles of clinical audits are completed.

In addition the provider should:

• consider making arrangements to provide greater privacy in the reception area, as face to face and telephone enquiries were responded to by the same staff, all located at the front desk.
• ensure medicines fridge temperatures are checked in line with published guidelines.

• ensure appropriate guidelines are in place for escalating concerning results found during new patient health checks.

• ensure the gaps in the training of staff in safeguarding adults from abuse are addressed.

• ensure suitable records are kept of multidisciplinary working and meetings so that patients are protected against the risks of unsafe or inappropriate care and treatment arising from a lack of proper information about them

• act on feedback from staff and from the review of patient survey results

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice